The Universe We Hold Inside
by Eclectic Muse
Summary: One night while out on a school stargazing trip, Leo Fitz makes a discovery that will impact the entire world. Faced with sudden fame and the looming apocalypse, he must decide just how far he's willing to go in order to save his best friend and love of his life. AU of the 1998 movie Deep Impact.
1. Chapter 1

In a park on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, a long row of telescopes was set up in an open, grassy area, lenses pointing up toward the clear night sky. People moved from telescope to telescope, some in pairs, so they could view the sky from different angles and zooms. The group, a local high school astronomy club, had been there since just before sundown in order to prepare for an evening of stargazing. Everyone focused diligently on their notes and maps, talking quietly amongst each other to compare results. Everyone, that is, except for one.

Leo Fitz was having a hard time concentrating. His thoughts kept straying to the girl peering through the lens of the telescope next to him. This wasn't a new thing; he was almost always distracted by Jemma Simmons, but tonight it was worse than usual. One of their classmates was throwing a party the next weekend. Normally this wouldn't concern him, as he and Jemma typically weren't invited to anything involving the popular kids at school, but this time, Jemma _had_ been invited. He hadn't. The thought of all the popular guys, the ones who always gave him a hard time for being too smart and too quiet, laughing and talking with Jemma, making her face light up, made his stomach churn. He didn't really want to think about _why_ -Jemma was free to do as she pleased-but he was pretty sure he knew anyway. It had been creeping up on him all year.

He had a hopeless crush on his best friend.

They'd become inseparable almost immediately after first meeting each other. Fitz was new, having moved from Scotland to Virginia over the summer after his mother had accepted a teaching position at the University of Richmond. Jemma, whose parents were both research scientists at Virginia Commonwealth, had been living in the States for a few years already. He'd been amazed to find a fellow Brit on the first day of school, and once he realized that she was also every bit as smart as he was-once they _both_ realized it-becoming best friends had felt like the natural evolution of things.

Fitz had always been a loner. His advanced intelligence had set him apart from his peers at a young age and his prickly social awkwardness hadn't helped. Finding Jemma had felt like nothing short of a miracle. For the first time in his fifteen years of life, he had someone who understood him on every level of his being, someone who could keep up with his rapid-fire thought processes (and surpass him, if he were being honest with himself), someone who didn't mind his rough edges, someone with whom he could have entire conversations through facial expressions alone. To him, Jemma was perfect in nearly every way: brilliant, funny, kind to others, and strikingly beautiful.

And therein lied the problem. He had a crush on her, but Fitz was sure he wasn't the only one who had noticed how wonderful Jemma was.

He wasn't stupid-he knew a lot of their classmates thought they were dating because they spent so much time together, but it wasn't like that. They were, very firmly, simply just friends. Maybe everyone's assumptions had a detrimental effect on any sort of romantic life Jemma might have wanted, but she didn't seem to mind the whispers. Still, he'd seen a few of the other guys in their year give her appreciative looks in the hall or the cafeteria. She seemed oblivious to it, but on the rare occasions she _did_ show any sort of interest in a guy, it always seemed to be one of the athletic types. Fitz was well aware of how much he _wasn't_ athletic, with his below-average height and weedy frame; it was the only way in which he felt woefully inadequate for Jemma. Sometimes he wished for a last, late growth spurt that would put him more on par with, say, Grant Ward, the star of the school football team. Maybe then she'd give him a second look and consider the possibility of being more than friends.

Speaking of Ward…

Fitz looked skeptically over at Jemma, who was bent with her eye to her telescope. "Grant Ward? Seriously?"

She didn't bother to look up at him. "It's just a party," she said calmly, twisting a focusing knob near the lens. "He asked if I wanted to go. He's...nice."

He huffed before turning back to squint through the lens of his own telescope. "To _you_ , maybe. He's-I know you don't believe me, but I still think it was him who had Nick steal my clothes out of my locker during gym."

Jemma sighed and straightened up to give him an exasperated look. "You're right, I don't believe you. Why would Grant even want to do that? We aren't in the same grade as he is and you barely know him."

 _Because he thinks you're hot,_ Fitz thought, not without a little malice. _And I'm in the way._

"Does he need a reason?" he said instead. "He's always like-" He paused before affecting his best attempt at an American accent. "I'm Grant Ward and I'm the captain of the football team, and I can throw a fifty-yard touchdown pass, blindfolded…" He stopped when he heard Jemma stifling a laugh. Grinning, he bent down and adjusted the angle on his telescope a bit. "So, yeah, he's like that and I'm-well, I'm the biggest nerd at school. We're natural enemies."

He saw Jemma click her flashlight on in his periphery, the red tint of the filter on it preserving their night vision. "Well, if you're the biggest nerd at school, you've got good company."

He couldn't stop himself from looking up at her then, hoping he didn't look too pleased. "Yeah?"

Jemma glanced at him as she jotted down some numbers in her notebook, then smiled as she turned her flashlight back off. It was the smile he'd only ever seen her give him, the one that made her eyes go all soft and warm. "Yeah." But before he could reply, her smile twisted into a smirk. "It _was_ a bit funny, the whole gym thing, you have to admit," she added. "I'd never seen you in shorts before and when you came into Chemistry wearing them your legs just looked so _pasty_ …"

Fitz huffed again, but this time it was in mock injury, because while Jemma was smothering another laugh behind one hand, her eyes were still bright and fond. It was hard to feel insulted when she looked at him like that. "Pasty," he repeated. "Right. Because _you're_ so sunkissed-"

Footsteps crunched on the grass behind them, and they both turned hastily back to their telescopes. "Getting a lot of observing done over here?" a voice asked.

"Yes," Jemma said as Fitz nodded quickly, pretending like he'd been focused on the view through the lens the entire time.

"Hmm. Sounds like it." He looked up; it was Mrs. Weaver, one of the science teachers at school and the astronomy club sponsor. She was strict but fair, and very perceptive, and she didn't look convinced by them at all. She nodded at him. "Can you name that bright star, Mr. Fitz?" She pointed up at the night sky. "The one in the handle of the Big Dipper."

Fitz didn't even have to look through the telescope to identify it. "That's Mizar," he said confidently, then cut his eyes across at Jemma. She was looking through her telescope again. "It's a double star. With Alcor."

Mrs. Weaver nodded, satisfied. "Very good. And what's the star next to them?"

He squinted up at the stars overhead, then bent to put his eye to the telescope lens. "I, uh…" He frowned. He could clearly see the object that Mrs. Weaver was referring to, but it looked out of place to him. It was closer to Mizar and Alcor than anything he remembered seeing on the star charts he and Jemma had studied, and in addition to that, it looked almost fuzzy. He twisted the knobs on the lens a bit, trying to get it to come into focus, but he couldn't do it. After a moment he stood up straight and frowned again, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I-I, um, I don't know."

"It's Megrez," Jemma said quickly, looking up at them. There was a small smile on her face and Fitz could tell she'd been holding herself back from saying it, wanting to give him the chance first. He didn't think she was right, though. He shook his head.

"No, I don't think so," he said.

The smile fell from Jemma's face. "But-you just said you didn't know-"

"I know," Fitz countered. "But I _do_ know it's not Megrez. It's too close, and look-" He came over to her telescope and, after making sure it was pointed in the right direction and focused correctly, gestured for her to look. "You're missing Alioth. It's in between Alcor and Megrez, remember? So whatever that is, it's not Megrez. It's just a little south, instead of east."

Jemma pursed her lips. "I still think it's Megrez."

"I promise, it's not."

Mrs. Weaver looked back and forth between the two of them with faint amusement. Jemma and Fitz often got into debates, even in the middle of class, the kind where each was convinced they were right and each refused to back down from their conclusion. "It may just be a satellite," she offered, making them both stop mid-sentence and look at her. "Why don't you take a picture of it, and I'll send it to Dr. Hall to have a look." Fitz nodded, and after smiling at them, Mrs. Weaver moved off to check on the other students.

"It's Megrez," Jemma said as Fitz checked to make sure the camera attached to his telescope was turned on.

He rolled his eyes. "Nope. Not Megrez."

"It is!"

He laughed shortly and shook his head, even though he knew she wasn't looking at him. "It's not!"

Silence fell between them as Jemma went back to her notes and Fitz took a picture of his telescope's view, but it didn't stay quiet for long. Jemma was far too used to having the last word in their debates. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper, but Fitz could hear the smile laced through it.

" _It is_."

-:-

 _Adrian Peak Observatory_  
 _Tucson, Arizona_  
 _One Week Later_

It was well into the night far across the country from Richmond. Inside the dome of one of the larger optical telescopes, Dr. Franklin Hall was settling into his shift of keeping watch over the observatory's many powerful long-range optical and radio telescopes. He was the sole scientist on duty, which meant he could play his favorite opera-Verdi's _La Traviata_ -as loud as he liked over the computer speakers and even hum along without getting ribbed by his coworkers.

After setting the master controls to close the dome he was currently in-a line of heavy thunderstorms was moving into the area-Dr. Hall ambled up onto the platform that held his computer workstation. He dropped into his chair with a sigh, the wheels skidding slightly, and reached to grab a slice of the pizza he'd had delivered earlier. Then he turned his attention to the mail he'd pulled from his inbox when he first clocked in.

At the top of the stack was a manila envelope with a Virginia return address. He took a bite of his pizza before setting it down to open the envelope, and pulled out several glossy 8x10" photographs. The first was a group photo: two rows of teenagers, one standing and the other kneeling, all smiling in front of a banner that read 'Lee High School Astronomy Club'. He smiled down at it, then flipped to the next photo. It was a telescope view shot, slipped into a plastic sheet. Two stars clearly more visible than the rest were circled on the plastic, with an indistinct object between them also circled and an arrow drawn to the words _see next page_.

Intrigued, Dr. Hall quickly flipped over. It was another photo in a plastic sheet, blown up to show more detail of the pertinent section of the previous photo. The two bright stars were circled again, listed as Mizar and Alcor- _ah, Ursa Major then_ , he thought-and the object in between them was also circled, but this time it was simply labeled with a question mark.

So the students had found something they couldn't identify, and neither could their sponsor. Interesting. To him it was clearly a comet, given the fuzziness of the object and the visible tail it had; it was just a matter of finding out which one. Taking another bite of his pizza, Dr. Hall checked the back of the photo to see if they had provided specific coordinates of the photo-they had-and turned to his computer to enter the data into his star tracking database.

After a second, a window popped up showing the last photo the observatory had taken of that section of the sky. The watermark listed it as only being two weeks old, so it was still good for comparison. He brought up the high resolution zoom and clicked a few times, focusing in on Mizar and Alcor. It proved him correct-the object was most definitely a comet. But which one?

"Huh," he muttered, then zoomed in one more time. "Which one are you, now?"

To his considerable knowledge, Dr. Hall couldn't think of any known comets scheduled to make a pass close by anytime soon. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, entered a few numbers into the program, and hit enter. Another window popped up, labeling Mizar and Alcor, but the comet came up as _C - 000 uncharted_.

He raised his eyebrows, his pizza forgotten. "Uncharted," he said to himself. "Now this _is_ interesting. Let's see where you're headed, shall we?"

He clicked a few more times to bring up the Kast spectrograph, then put in the data he had from both the photograph and the tracking database. Hitting enter again with a flourish, he sat back and waited for the results to come up.

When they did, he frowned. Then he leaned forward, squinting. A second later, his face drained of all color.

The orbital interpolation graph had put the comet's trajectory on a direct collision course with Earth.

Swearing beneath his breath, he frantically clicked around to save copies and screenshots of the data before opening his email, quickly typing out a message to one of his colleagues in the Department of Planetary Sciences at the university in the city. He hit 'send' and was about to turn away to open his desk drawer when he noticed that the cursor was just sitting there, churning, not sending the email. He leaned in to look at the network icon on the desktop tray, and swore again when he saw that it was blinking red.

One of the many quirks of life at the observatory that they had yet to figure out was why their cable internet would sometimes go out during rainstorms. Dr. Hall looked up, where the sound of heavy rain drumming against the dome was now audible, and grimaced. He pulled out his phone and tried to put a call through, only to find that his signal reception was spotty, too. There was nothing else for it-he would have to drive into the city. Dr. Vaughn wouldn't appreciate him banging on his door so close to midnight, but given the circumstances, Dr. Hall thought he would understand. This wasn't the sort of information that needed to wait until morning.

Fumbling in his haste, he jammed a thumb drive into the USB port on the front of his computer and loaded all of the data and screenshots he'd compiled onto it. Then he opened his file drawer and tried to grab a fresh manila envelope. His adrenaline was running so high that it took him three tries to properly grasp it; when he finally pulled one out, he tossed it on his desk and then grabbed the two photos from the high school and flipped the one with the coordinates over to double-check the back.

The photograph was credited to one Leo Fitz. Dr. Hall grabbed a marker from his pencil cup next to the computer monitor and quickly wrote 'Fitz-Hall' on the back of the photograph. Then he slipped both of them into the manila envelope along with the USB drive, scribbled ' _Attn: Dr. Phillip Vaughn_ ' on the front of it just in case, grabbed his jacket and car keys, and ran for the door.

Outside, the rain was lashing hard against the side of the building, and Dr. Hall used his jacket to cover his head and protect the envelope as he sprinted for his Jeep. His legs were quickly soaked through, and he grumbled as he wrenched open the driver's side door and threw himself inside. It was uncomfortable, but he would deal with it. The planet was at stake; he didn't need to worry about soggy trousers. He turned the keys in the ignition, threw the gear into drive, and peeled out of the parking lot.

He tried to go as fast as he could, but the torrential downpour made it difficult to see the road, even with his high-beams on and the windshield wipers going full tilt. He groaned in frustration, leaning forward to look over the steering wheel-as if that would help visibility-and reached blindly into his pocket, pulling his phone back out and swiping his thumb across the screen. Glancing at it in quick spurts, trying to keep his eyes on both the road and what he was doing, he hit the speed-dial button to Dr. Vaughn.

The call still refused to go through, the phone screen blinking _NO SERVICE_ at him as if in mockery of his predicament. "Damn it!" he cried, and dropped the phone into his lap so he could grip the steering wheel with both hands.

He gave it another mile before trying again, with the same result. Sighing, he resigned himself to never getting a signal, and tossed his phone onto the passenger seat on top of the manila envelope. Then he slowed the Jeep down as he prepared to take a hairpin turn.

Desperate as he was to reach the city, he still took the curve a little too fast, and the wheels skidded as he punched the gas coming out of it. The Jeep started fishtailing, and Dr. Hall swore as he spun the steering wheel, trying not to overcorrect. Just when he thought he had the car back under control, it hit a slick spot on the pavement and hydroplaned. His stomach dropped as he felt the tires lose friction, the steering wheel going loose under his hands. He could do nothing but shut his eyes and hope for the best.

A second later, the Jeep slammed hard into the guardrail on the front corner of the driver's side, then spun before flipping into a roll. The world was a spinning vortex of deploying airbags, shattering glass, and crunching metal, and Dr. Hall felt a rush of water against his face and chest before the car suddenly went weightless. His stomach lurched.

He had one second to realize that he'd flipped over the guardrail and into the ravine below before there was another bone-wrenching crash, and everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

"Do you think Dr. Hall will have had a chance to look at the photos I had Mrs. Weaver send?" Fitz asked, leaning toward Jemma so only she could hear him. "Because I am really looking forward to proving you wrong."

It was a few days later, and they were sitting in their desks in Mrs. Weaver's classroom waiting for their teacher to arrive so the Astronomy Club meeting could get started. The other members of the club buzzed excitedly around them; it was the last meeting before school let out for the summer, and everyone was busy discussing their plans for the upcoming break. Fitz and Jemma, however, had more pressing concerns.

Jemma shot him a withering look and folded her hands primly on her desk. "Don't hold your breath, _Leopold_. I'm sure if he's sent anything in, it will show that _I'm_ right."

Fitz couldn't help but grin widely. Jemma only ever called him by his full given name when he'd really riled her up. Swallowing a laugh, he leaned over the side of his seat even further. "Why are you so convinced that you're right?" he asked.

"Why are _you_?"

This time, he couldn't hold back a laugh. They'd been having the same argument on and off ever since the stargazing trip, and neither of them was willing to budge. Fitz was absolutely certain he'd discovered something new, and Jemma felt just as certain that it was Megrez. Showing her star charts hadn't helped, and at this point he suspected that pride might be a contributing factor. Jemma normally didn't have a problem admitting she was wrong, as that meant that there was more, correct, information out there to learn, but in the past couple of months they'd formed the possibly bad habit of trying to outdo each other in the knowledge department. Maybe, he thought, looking at the thin press of Jemma's mouth, after this round he would lighten up a bit.

But, while they were still at it, there wasn't any reason they couldn't have a bit of fun.

"Want to bet on it?" He waggled his eyebrows at her.

Her own eyebrows drew in. "Define the terms and I'll think about it."

"Well…" Fitz made a show of thoughtfully tapping his chin. "If I'm right, you have to go to World Market and buy me all the Aero bars, Dairy Milk, and toffee that I want. Oh, and some of that malt whiskey fudge they have."

Jemma wrinkled her nose. "Fitz, I am not going all the way to Glen Allen for you. I don't think my parents would even drive me that far."

His eyes widened. "That sounds like you're suggesting I have a chance at being right." At her answering glare, he laughed and held up his hands. "Those are my terms. Name yours."

"Fine." She sighed. "If I'm correct…you can't have any sweets for-two weeks. And I'll get your mum in on it."

Fitz's jaw dropped. "What-Jemma-that is just cruel and unusual, even for you. What do you even get out of that?"

Jemma rolled her eyes. "I get the satisfaction of knowing you're actually eating well for once, instead of binging on biscuits and toffee-"

" _Binging_? I'll have you know-"

"-And honestly, I will never understand how you manage to pack down junk food the way you do without just-ballooning."

"Superior physiological makeup," he shot back, preening. "And excellent metabolism. Just another way in which I as a Scot excel over your Englishness."

Jemma scoffed, but was stopped in any reply she might have made by the arrival of Mrs. Weaver, who strode in carrying a few files and papers. Both Jemma and Fitz sat up straighter in their seats, eager to hear whatever news she had, but Jemma shot him a small smile before she faced fully forward. They were good enough friends by now for the reassurance not to be necessary, but it was still nice to know that she didn't truly mean any of her jabs.

Once everyone had settled down, Mrs. Weaver stepped forward, her mouth pulled into a frown. "I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news," she said, folding her hands in front of her. "Earlier today I learned that Dr. Hall passed away a few days ago in a car accident."

A dismayed murmur went up among the students; Fitz sat back in his seat, stunned, as Jemma whispered, "Oh, no."

Mrs. Weaver nodded. "I know. I'm sorry. This isn't the way I wanted to close out the year for us. Dr. Hall has been such a tremendous help in getting this club up and running, and his support and knowledge has been invaluable. I know he'll be greatly missed, both here and in the academic community. I've brought a card for all of us to sign that I'd like to send to his family. We'll do that at the end of the meeting." She paused, and sighed. "Now, let's talk about some things that will be available for you to do over the summer, starting with the ongoing programs at the Science Museum…"

As Mrs. Weaver went on, Fitz found that his eagerness to trump Jemma had diminished significantly. He still wanted to know whether or not he was right, but his curiosity suddenly felt very small next to the fact that Dr. Hall had died. Bickering over who was correct when a man's life had been cut short just didn't feel right.

He spent the rest of the meeting lost in thought. Once it was over, he shouldered his backpack and went with Jemma to sign the card that Mrs. Weaver had put out; then, he gave her a questioning look and she nodded once, as if to say _go ahead_. He approached the older woman slowly, where she stood rearranging some papers on her desk. "Ah…Mrs. Weaver?"

She looked up. "Yes?"

He clutched at the straps of his backpack. "Um…I realize this might not be the time, but I was wondering…" He looked over at Jemma, who had come to stand right next to him. " _We_ were wondering if you knew whether or not Dr. Hall had a chance to look at the stuff we sent him before-well, everything."

Mrs. Weaver shook her head. "No, I'm afraid not. But if I do hear anything before the school year ends, I'll be sure to let you know."

Both Fitz and Jemma nodded and murmured their thanks before turning to leave. As they left the classroom for the hall, one of the other girls in the club ran to catch up with them. "Jemma!" she cried. "Are you still coming to the party tonight?"

Jemma turned to look at the other girl-Callie, Fitz reminded himself-and smiled. "Oh! Yes, I am. Are you going too?"

Callie nodded, smiling back widely. "Yeah. Grant invited me today and he mentioned you were coming. I guess I'll see you then! 7:00, right?"

"Right," Jemma said, and Callie gave her a thumbs-up before turning and going in the opposite direction down the hall. Then she started walking again, headed for the stairwell, and Fitz followed, trying not to drag his feet too much or scowl too openly.

"That's tonight?" he asked, feigning ignorance.

Jemma nodded. "Yes. I'd forgotten about it, actually. It's a good thing Callie reminded me. I wouldn't want to disappoint Grant."

Fitz turned his face away from her so she couldn't see the ugly frown that twisted his mouth. After a pause, he carefully said, "You know…you don't _have_ to go if you don't want to."

"But I do want to!" She looked excited, and it only made his mood sink further. "I've just been so busy studying for finals that it slipped my mind. I've never been invited to a party before; it's supposed to be like a rite of passage, isn't it? An American end-of-year bash, party, fling, you know. It might be fun!"

He made a noncommittal noise in reply as they reached the bottom of the steps. "I think I'd pass," he muttered. He was pretty sure he knew exactly what sort of party it was going to be: he'd heard Ward in the hall earlier in the week saying that his parents wouldn't be home and that his older brother was already back from university, so they'd be able to score some beer. There would be alcohol, loud music, and loads of their classmates who wouldn't normally give them the time of day. It sounded like the exact opposite of fun for him.

And that, he supposed, was why he was so upset that she was going. Over the course of the year, Jemma had given him the impression that she didn't put much stock in things that their peers considered 'typical' or 'rites of passage', so her acceptance of Ward's party invitation had genuinely confused him. He was left wondering if he'd misjudged her somehow. His lonely childhood and awkward insecurity had him fearing that this was just the first sign of Jemma pulling away, that she'd tired of him and was moving on to newer pastures. He'd never been able to keep a friend for very long; why would she be any different?

(Another reason why he was upset: because he'd been convinced she _was_ different.)

Jemma glanced at him as they walked down the empty hallway toward the school lobby. Apparently he wasn't doing as good a job of hiding his sour face as he'd hoped, because her smile collapsed into faint exasperation. "Oh, you're not still put out over not getting invited, are you?"

"No," Fitz replied emphatically, but his voice rang a little hollow.

Jemma tsked. "You know I'd bring you with me if I could, but since it's not my party or my house, I'd feel-I don't know, _rude_ , bringing someone uninvited."

He brightened briefly at that, because that showed she'd thought of him, but then he affected a casual shrug, keeping his eyes trained on the floor as they walked. "No, it's fine, I-you should go. If you want to. I just thought, the Eta Aquarids are going on right now, and we'd sort of talked about…you know, maybe…" He trailed off at that, feeling a bit silly. Sure, they'd talked about it, but they hadn't made any concrete plans. And why would she want to spend her Friday night watching a meteor shower with him when she could be having fun with Grant Ward and the rest of their entire bloody school?

Jemma gave him what looked suspiciously like a pitying look. It only made him feel worse. "I can come over tomorrow night, you know."

"Yeah, I know, it's just…" _Tonight's the peak of the shower_. "Eh, never mind." He shrugged again and forced a smile. "You should go and have enough fun for the both of us."

Her answering smile, bright and cheerful, was almost worth the hit to his fragile feelings. "Thanks, Fitz. I hope I do." They were outside now; she looked toward the parking lot and perked up even more. "Look! My mum's already here. I call shotgun today!" She ran ahead of him towards her mother's car, and Fitz followed.

After being dropped off at home, Fitz spent most of the late afternoon up in his room sketching out designs for gadgets he'd dreamed up to try and build over the summer. His mother came home from work around 6:00 and prepared a quick dinner for them. After they ate, she settled on the living room couch with a stack of her students' final papers to grade while he went upstairs to prepare for a night of sky-watching. He took his small telescope out of his closet, then propped it against the wall while he slid his bedroom window open. Once he made sure the window was secure, he carefully eased his telescope out and down to the flat roof of their covered back deck, just below his window. Then he climbed out himself.

It took him a few minutes to get the telescope set up, making sure the legs were tight and locked before aiming the lens in the general direction of where the constellation Aquarius would be visible in the night sky. After he was done with that, he reached back inside for his sleeping bag and a red-filtered flashlight, just in case he needed it. He spread the unzipped sleeping bag out across the roof, and then all that was left to do was wait for it to get dark enough for any meteors to be visible.

He stretched out on the sleeping bag, folding his hands beneath his head, and gazed up into the rapidly-darkening sky, an inky purple shot through with dark blues and a touch of pink. The sounds of crickets singing in the yard below him and the occasional car passing by on the road lulled him into a sort of half-doze, helped along by the late spring heat. If he closed his eyes, it wasn't hard to pretend that he was back in Scotland, out on the terrace of their small flat in Glasgow. But he was thousands of miles away from there now, and in some ways he felt just as far away from the person he'd been then. So much had changed for him in just one year.

Fitz had never really pictured himself living in America, or going to an American high school, much less finding a niche for himself. He knew that his happiness was due in large part to Jemma and how she'd made him feel welcome and wanted in those first crucial weeks of school. He would never forget sitting in the back of first period math class on the first day, slouched in his seat and trying to look as small and unassuming as he could. The teacher was calling roll and he'd been dreading hearing his name, knowing that he would have to correct him and that the other students in the class would laugh. Sure enough, once the teacher said "Leopold Fitz?" he'd heard someone off to the side of him snigger, and a few others looked around for the unfortunate bearer of such a ridiculous name. It was only when he'd raised his hand and said, "Here-and, uh, just Leo, please," that every single head in the class had whipped around to look at him. He'd slumped down even further in his seat, fervently wishing he was back in Scotland where he sounded just like everyone else and where his accent didn't single him out as a curiosity.

But no one had turned to look as fast as a girl sitting in the front row, her brown hair flying as she twisted in her seat. Fitz remembered it because while everyone else was gawking, she'd looked _excited_. She'd turned up in nearly all of his classes over the course of the day, but she always sat front and center while he chose to try and hide in the back. When he arrived in sixth period Chemistry, however, the only empty seats left were up front. He'd taken the table to the far right and hoped that the class didn't fill up so he could keep to himself. But a moment later, someone had cleared their throat and politely asked if the seat next to him was taken. He'd looked up so quickly he'd almost given himself whiplash. It was the girl from math class, and she had spoken in the sweetest English lilt he'd ever heard. He'd stared at her for a moment, his mind blown-there was another Brit in school and Christ alive she was _pretty_ -before he'd stammered out a negative. She'd smiled at him, sat down, and launched immediately into conversation. Her name was Jemma Simmons and she was _so_ excited to meet a fellow Brit, she was originally from Sheffield in England, she remembered him from their morning math class, and did he know that they were the only two freshmen who met the requirements to take Chemistry a year early?

He'd only been able to stare in amazement as he nodded, too stunned to really reply. A wonderful friendship had been born that day, and even though it had taken her a few weeks to really get him to open up, Fitz wasn't sure he'd ever really stopped being amazed by Jemma.

It was easy at first to occupy himself with good memories of Jemma, of how she'd fallen into his life and brightened it up and broken through his awkward shell. But as the night lengthened and the sky turned black, he found his thoughts turning more and more to Ward's party, and what Jemma was likely up to at that very moment.

Fitz knew his mind was conjuring up worst-case scenarios, but he couldn't stop himself. He could see Jemma in his mind's eye, surrounded by their classmates, laughing, a plastic cup in her hand. She looked bright and alive, her eyes sparkling. He imagined her dancing to the music that was surely killing everyone's eardrums, imagined all of the guys there watching, imagined them asking her to dance, one by one. And worst of all, there was Grant Ward, making her smile so widely it made her eyes crinkle and her nose scrunch up the way it did when she was really happy, the way that made his stomach swoop every time he saw it. He imagined her doing perfectly fine without him.

He sighed and briefly closed his eyes. Jemma was free to do things without him, and having a pity party of one was no way to spend a Friday. Maybe having her as a friend had spoiled him for company, but on the whole he was used to being alone. One night, or more if his fears were actually true, wouldn't make a difference.

At least, that's what he told himself.

He fixed his gaze on Aquarius and focused, curious and determined to see how many meteors he could spot in one hour before the peak reached its zenith later in the evening. After that, everything else fell away until it was just Fitz left below the endless sky, feeling like he was floating among the stars. After awhile, he spotted his first meteor-just a quick zip of light across the sky-and he smiled to himself. This, science, was where he was happiest, even if it was something as simple as stargazing and watching for meteors.

He'd counted twenty of them, unsure of how much time had actually passed, when he heard a noise at his window. He looked over to see an arm sticking out of it, setting a can of Coke down on the roof. A second later, Jemma climbed through, carrying another can. He sat up quickly, staring at her in surprise.

Once she was out on the roof, she bent to pick up the first can, then straightened before grinning down at him. "I'm not too late, am I?" she asked, crossing the short distance between them. "Look, I brought you another Coke too, for some extra caffeine so we can stay awake." When he didn't respond, just kept staring open-mouthed up at her, she nudged his knee with the toe of her shoe. "Budge over and make some room for me, will you?"

"Uh-yeah, uh, hey," Fitz managed, scooting over on the sleeping bag so Jemma could have room to sit down. As she made herself comfortable, handing him one of the Cokes, he said, "Um…I thought you were going to Ward's party?"

Jemma popped the tab on her Coke and took a long swig, sighing in satisfaction after she swallowed. "Oh, I did, for a little while. And I had one hypothesis proven correct, at least."

"Yeah?" he asked warily. "What's that?"

She turned to smile at him. " _Definitely_ not as interesting without you around."

His heart thudded heavily in his chest. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she echoed, stretching her legs out before shifting to sit cross-legged. "All anyone wanted to do was drink or play silly games like beer pong, and I couldn't even hear myself think over how loud the music was. I'm surprised the neighbors didn't complain." She shrugged. "Which is perfectly fine if that's the sort of thing you like, I guess, but…it's not really _me_."

Fitz couldn't stop the brief plume of smugness that flared up. He'd thought so. But he didn't say that. Instead, he opened his own can of Coke and took a drink before looking at her. "Did you have _any_ fun?"

"A little," Jemma said. "One of the girls said she was going to Miami for a week and when I asked if she was going to the Everglades she said no, just the beach." She sighed. "Callie was there, though. We talked for awhile, but then one of the guys got her to do a row of shots, and that was around the time I decided to leave. It was getting a little… _much_ for me."

He raised his eyebrows. The thought of Callie Hannigan doing shots was mildly intriguing-she'd never struck him as the extreme partying type-but he was more concerned with the slight frown that pinched Jemma's face, only just visible in the dim, pale moonlight. "What do you mean?"

Jemma shrugged, looking down. "I felt like the only person there who wasn't drinking. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that whatever Grant's brother got was _awful_ , cheap, nasty stuff. I poured mine down the sink when no one was looking. Plus, you know, it was-we were all underage there." She laughed quietly. "And people kept wanting to dance and I don't really know how, and Grant-well, he just-" She cut herself off, shrugging again.

It was his turn to frown. "Ward? What did he do?"

She shrugged yet again, mumbling something indistinct, and her obvious discomfort sent up a red warning flag in Fitz's mind. Every horror story he could think of involving Jemma and Grant Ward flared to life, and suddenly white noise was buzzing along his nerves. He felt too hot inside his own skin. "Did he-did he _do_ something?" he asked, fighting to keep his voice neutral.

Something in his tone made her look up, though, because she shook her head sharply, reaching out to put a hand on his arm. "Oh! No! No, nothing like _that_ , nothing-he just-I think he was _trying_ to get me alone." Fitz's stomach lurched. "But I kept making up excuses, because I didn't really feel like..." She waved her hands about. "Anyway, I'm sure if you'd been there to talk to I wouldn't have had a problem."

It was easy to believe her when she smiled at him the way she did then, all teeth and dimples and shining eyes. He smiled back, feeling his nerves cool down, and elbowed her gently. "Sounds like you did just fine without me."

Jemma smiled, then took another sip of her Coke. "Well, I did it. I went to a party, so I guess I can cross it off my bucket list now. When I realized I'd much rather be here with you, I just texted my mum to come and get me. She brought me straight over. And she said that since it's Friday, I can stay as long as I like! Your mum agreed, too, by the way, when I talked to her downstairs. Isn't that great? It means we can watch the peak together! How many meteors have you seen so far? I know we still have a couple of hours to go but I'm sure you've seen _some_. Tell me everything!"

Fitz blinked rapidly, a little dazed by the deluge of words she'd just unleashed on him; he'd honestly blanked a little on everything that followed _I'd much rather be here with you_ , but he caught that she'd remembered tonight was the peak of the shower. Feeling his heart skip and warm up considerably inside his chest, he leaned back on his elbows and pointed up toward where Aquarius was in the night sky. "Well, most of them are coming from around Aquarius-you know that-but I think I've seen maybe twenty so far? It should start picking up soon, though. Maybe if we're lucky we'll even see a fireball. Here, you can watch better if you lie flat on your back, you won't get a cramp in your neck that way…"

He lay back on the sleeping bag, gesturing for her to follow, and once they were settled shoulder to shoulder, he pointed back up into the sky. "Okay, there-oh! Look! There goes one!"

Jemma gasped, reflexively reaching over to grab his arm in excitement, and he rolled his head to grin at her. As she grinned back, Fitz felt the last of his earlier unease break away and crumble into dust. All that was left was contentment and the promise of a night spent stargazing with his best friend. Maybe, he thought, it was time that he stopped being surprised by Jemma wanting to be in his life, and time he started trusting her to always be there, no matter what.


	3. Chapter 3

_ONE YEAR LATER_

Driving home from work, Fitz had the air conditioner in his car going full blast to combat the stifling June heat. He'd angled the vents closest to him to blow directly on his face, and he couldn't fight a contented smile as the cold air ruffled at his shirt collar and the hair at his forehead. Next to him, in the passenger seat, Jemma was talking a mile a minute.

"…And I really don't understand why Dr. Blake is so hesitant to use your designs!" she said, twisting her hands in her lap. "I really think it could make a difference with the way the animals are fed. It would revolutionize the park's entire system, be safer for both the animals and the employees, _and_ it would be more cost-effective! The zoo would actually _save_ money in the end!"

Fitz just smiled to himself, glancing at her as he made a turn. "He's hesitant because I'm sixteen years old and still in high school, Jemma," he countered.

Just as he expected, she scoffed and crossed her arms, before reaching back out to turn an air vent her way. "He shouldn't discriminate based on your age. You're smarter than almost everyone else who works there, and your ideas are brilliant."

His smile widened at her praise. Her faith in his abilities always cheered him up. "Well, I know you're in my corner, at least," he joked, and in his periphery he saw her smile back. "Besides, you know I want to get everything sorted and sent to the Patent Office first before I submit any sort of proper proposal to the zoo."

"I know." Jemma sank back against the seat and pulled her phone from her pocket, tapping at the screen a few times before starting to scroll. "I'm just really excited about your designs, and I want you to get the credit you're due." Fitz smiled again, and she stopped scrolling for a moment. "Are you going to watch the President's press conference tonight?"

"I don't know," he mused. He didn't pay much attention to American politics, but even he knew it was a little unusual for the President to call a press conference on such short notice, and not even give any details on what it would be about. "Isn't it going to be about that fellow on his Cabinet that resigned or whatever? Rittenhouse?"

Jemma hummed thoughtfully. "My dad thinks so, but we'll see. He and Mum really want to watch, so I guess I will be, too. I just thought about it because one of the news sites I follow on Twitter tweeted about it. They think it's about Rittenhouse, too."

He shrugged, then checked both sides of the road as he came to a four-way stop. "I might. First thing, though, I'm taking a shower." He tugged at his open shirt collar and made a face. "I've been roasting outside all day, and as much as I love working with the primate habitats, I don't want to _smell_ like one."

Jemma laughed. "You're wearing the sunblock I gave you, right?"

"Do you _see_ any sunburn on me?" he asked, shaking an arm at her. Then he caught sight of his reflection in the rearview mirror and saw the faint pink dusting his nose and cheeks, and thought that perhaps he should be a bit more vigilant about making sure his face was protected. Jemma just laughed again, and he shook his head, still smiling. "I'll be fine. Shower first, then dinner-"

"Which I'm sure you'll eat your weight of," she teased.

He sighed loudly and rolled his eyes. "I live for the day when you don't make any comments on my eating habits."

She didn't fall for his affected annoyance. "And _I_ live for the day when I finally make sense of it."

"Jemma, I am a _growing man_ -"

"I just wish I had access to a lab where I could run some tests on your blood! I could map out your metabolism and make an entire study of it. It would be fascinating."

He made another face. "Jemma, you scare me sometimes. I'm afraid I'm going to wake up one night and you'll be standing over me with, with a test kit of some sort, and you'll turn me into one of your science experiments."

She burst out laughing again and didn't really stop until Fitz pulled into her driveway and put the car into park. "Fitz, you really are too much fun to wind up," she said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye.

"Right." He gave her a long-suffering look and shooed her away with one hand. "Go on, get out of my car, you crazy woman. I'll text you later, yeah?"

Jemma nodded, smiling at him as she opened the car door. "Of course! Talk to you later." Then she shut the door and waved at him, and he pulled out of her driveway to head home.

He was glad they had both managed to get summer internships at the Metro Zoo. It meant he got to spend his summer vacation with both his best friend _and_ the most delightful monkeys he'd ever seen. Granted, he and Jemma already spent most of their free time together-it was a perk of living only one street over from her-but now he was guaranteed to see her every morning and afternoon at least, on the drive to and from the zoo. She spent her day learning how the animals were fed and cared for while he spent his with the zoo's head keeper, checking the security and stability of the enclosures. He loved it when their rounds took them through the primate exhibit; he was pretty sure the pinnacle of his life's achievements so far was having a tiny spider monkey come and sit on his shoulder for a few minutes that day while he was raking up some leaves in their enclosure.

Jemma had looked so genuinely happy for him when he couldn't stop talking about it on their lunch break, and that had settled a warm glow in his chest that remained for the rest of the afternoon. One of the things he'd grown to love best about Jemma was that she never shamed him for the things he was interested in, or made him feel like he had to dial his enthusiasm back. She teased him sometimes, yes, but there was always a softness to her eyes that belied her true affection.

Over the past year, his crush on Jemma had only deepened, taking root in his heart and blossoming into what could only be love. He assumed that was what it was, because he'd never felt for anyone the way he felt about her, and he didn't know what else to name it. He just knew he lived to see her smile, to hear her talk about anything and everything, to see the way the sun shone on her hair and how her forehead creased when she was concentrating on something. She filled up his days. He didn't think there was anything he wouldn't do for her.

He'd put out a few feelers from time to time, a few innocent words or questions, to try and gauge if she even remotely felt the same way, and the results had been…inconclusive. Jemma still seemed to prefer his company over anyone else's and they'd developed a sometimes alarming lack of personal space, but she'd never shown any interest in him that felt like _more_. She never lingered or looked at him too long, and if she ever was flustered over a guy, it was still the larger, athletic ones who practically dwarfed him. At some point during the year, he'd resigned himself to his fate: doomed to pine over Jemma in silence while she went about in ignorant bliss, and trying to convince himself that her friendship was enough. And most of the time, it was. Fitz wouldn't trade the time he spent with Jemma for anything, even if it meant she would return his feelings. The closeness they'd cultivated over the past two years, the mental intimacy and companionship, was far too precious to him.

Thinking about Jemma kept a smile on Fitz's face as he drove the short distance home, then said hello to his mother on his way upstairs for a nice, long shower. Feeling much more like himself once he was done and dressed in clean clothes, Fitz headed back downstairs to eat an early dinner with his mother-roast beef with potatoes and carrots, one of his favorites-then brought some design sketches to work on at the kitchen table while his mother turned on the TV in the living room to watch the President's press conference. He figured if anything important came up, he could listen in while he scribbled away at his graph paper.

The television provided a comforting sort of drone in the background as he drew, every once in awhile dropping his pencil to pick up an eraser and carefully scrub off a few lines on the paper. He heard the music that usually preceded a Presidential broadcast on the news station his mother favored, followed a few minutes later by President Beck's voice speaking. Then his mother gave a sharp, startled yell.

"What?" Fitz exclaimed, leaping up, sending his chair skidding backward. He was in the living room in three quick steps, pencil still in hand, coming up behind his mother on the couch. "What is it?!"

She fumbled with the remote control in a panic. "The President-he just said-bloody hell-"

Hearing his mother swear was such a rarity that it only served to ramp up his own sudden anxiety. "Mum, what happened?" he demanded. On the screen, the President was talking about a comet. What on Earth was so terrifying about a comet?

"Just listen!" She finally managed to hit rewind on the TV's instant replay, and she backed the speech up a little before pressing play again.

"-hope you'll bear with me and hear what I have to say," President Beck said. "A little over a year ago, two American astronomers-Franklin Hall and Leo Fitz-working on a mountaintop in Arizona-"

His mother twisted around to look back up at him. "Did you hear that?" she cried. " _Leo Fitz!_ He said your name!"

Fitz just stared at the television in shock, feeling like he'd been zapped with a live wire. Surely it was some sort of coincidence-he knew he had a rather unique name, but maybe there was someone else out there with it, someone who worked in the sciences and knew Franklin Hall. _Dr. Hall_ , he thought, his mind racing. He hadn't thought of the other man in months, not since he'd died.

His phone buzzed loudly on the kitchen table. Sparing the television a glance, Fitz turned back to go pick it up, and wasn't surprised to see it a text from Jemma, followed quickly by another one.

 _[Jemma] Are you watching this?  
[Jemma] Please tell me you are!_

He drifted back into the living room as he read her texts. His mother had fast-forwarded through the speech to catch up with it in real-time; now the President was talking about a large spaceship that the U.S. and Russia were building together-they were calling it _Messiah_ -with plans to intercept the giant comet that had been discovered, and hopefully knock it off its course. Because it was heading straight for Earth.

His shock morphed into horror. Head pounding and feeling a little faint, Fitz could only manage a one-word response.

 _[Fitz] yeah_

Onscreen, President Beck was introducing the crew of the _Messiah_ and discussing their plans for the mission. His mother was listening with rapt attention. Through the stupor of his shock, Fitz fit all the pieces together in his mind and realized there was really only one possible explanation. As Sherlock Holmes had famously said, when the impossible had been eliminated, what remained, however improbable, was the truth.

He'd almost forgotten about that night with the Astronomy Club, when he'd spotted something unfamiliar in the sky and cheerfully argued with Jemma about it. Mrs. Weaver had never been able to get any further details on the questions they'd sent to Dr. Hall, so the incident had gradually slipped from his mind. But that had been a little over a year ago, just like the President said, and he had said his name in conjunction with Dr. Hall's. Apparently, Dr. Hall _had_ seen his photographs and realized exactly what he'd found. It all made sense. He was responsible for the discovery of a killer comet set on a collision course with Earth.

He couldn't wrap his mind around it. It was just too huge to comprehend all at once.

But why had no one ever contacted him? He thought that maybe it warranted at least a phone call, or _something_. Finding out by being name-checked in a Presidential speech on live television was a complete shock to the system, to say the least. Then again, preparing for this sort of thing in secret for as long as possible might have been the best course of action. It wouldn't do to have the public panicking when they didn't need to be.

Judging by the look on his mother's face, though, panic was probably unavoidable.

Fitz looked down at his phone in his hand; Jemma hadn't texted him back. He assumed she was still watching the broadcast too. Shaking himself from his thoughts, he focused back on the television. The President had started taking questions from the reporters in the audience.

"What is the comet's name?" one of them asked.

"The two scientists who found the comet were killed in a car crash while racing from their observatory to alert the world," President Beck said. "So we named it for them: Fitz-Hall."

His mother threw her hands up. "' _Fitz_ '! He said it again!"

"Mum!" he hissed. "I heard. I'm trying to listen!"

Just then, his mother's phone rang at the same time as their front doorbell. Snatching her phone up, she motioned for him to get the door, but he was already crossing the living room to go answer it, somehow intuiting that it was Jemma. Sure enough, when he opened the door she was there, breathless, cheeks flushed and hair wild like she'd ran the entire way. Behind her, further down the street on the sidewalk, he could see her parents walking quickly to catch up.

"Fitz!" she cried, walking right in. "It's you, isn't it? He's got to be talking about you!"

"I think he is," he said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her after him into the living room. The President was still answering questions; his mother had stood and gone into the kitchen to talk on her phone, speaking rapidly to the person on the other end of the line. "And-you probably didn't hear because you were running over here-but look." He pointed to the news ticker running along the bottom of the screen, where the official name of the comet scrolled across. "They _named_ it after me! Me and Dr. Hall. I can't-I can't believe this."

Jemma's jaw dropped, and she reached up with both hands to clutch at his arm and shoulder. If it had been any other moment, he would have been thrilled; now he was just in a daze. "This is _enormous_ ," she breathed, staring at the television. "This is-it's the photo you took, on that trip last year, right?"

"Yeah." He was dimly aware of Jemma's parents coming inside and closing the front door behind them, then going past them into the kitchen to talk to his mother, who had just got off the phone. "Also, get this: they think I _died_. With Dr. Hall. He said both of us died." He put a hand to his forehead. "Christ."

Suddenly Jemma flinched; when he looked over at her in concern, she dropped her hands away from him and hastily pulled her phone from her pocket.

"I got a buzz," she murmured, swiping her thumb across the screen. Then she swallowed. "Oh dear. It's Callie. She's watching too. She wants to know if-should I tell her? That it's you? She's asking if you're dead."

Fitz was at a loss. "I-I guess? I don't know. I'm positive he meant me, but… _No_. I'm not bloody dead; I saw her a few weeks ago!" He heard his mother's phone ring again, and Jemma's buzzed as well. She peered closely at him for a moment, then started tapping quickly on her phone screen.

"This is so strange," she said. "It's insane. I can't-wow. Fitz, you made the discovery of a _lifetime_."

Maybe he truly was in shock; he felt like he was viewing and hearing the world from underneath a soft, gauzy blanket. Everything was surreal, and he felt slightly detached from it all. Jemma's arm pressing against his was the only thing anchoring him to the ground. "Well," he sighed, "that solves one thing at least."

Jemma glanced up from her phone. "What's that?"

He gave her a twisted, uneasy smile. "It definitely wasn't Megrez."


	4. Chapter 4

"Mr. Fitz! Mr. Fitz! Can you tell us more about the night you discovered the comet?"

Fitz kept his head down as he hurried from his car to his front door. "No comment." Then he glanced up at the three reporters hovering on the sidewalk and grimaced. "Sorry." He quickly went inside, shutting the door on their continued questions, and let out a long breath. Another day, another set of reporters he had to dodge.

The two weeks since the President's speech had passed in a blur. Once it got out that he was still alive, Fitz's life became an endless parade of phone calls and news reporters at their door, people wanting to interview him and take his picture, people who gawked at him if he so much as went to the grocery store or the gas station, people who even wanted his autograph. Apparently, the fact that he was just a teenager and still in school had really captivated the minds of the entire world, and everyone wanted a piece of him.

The interview and statement requests had grown so large in number that his mother had coordinated with one of the local news stations to route all requests through them. He even had his own specially-assigned staff person, Victoria Hand-or Vic, as she preferred to be called. She was brisk and efficient in high heels and red streaks through her dark hair, and Fitz found her more than a little scary. She'd told him to try not to answer any questions if people caught him while he was out on his own, and to avoid social media if possible. He didn't think that would be a problem. His Twitter-which had blown up overnight with thousands of new followers, all demanding a response from him-was largely unused. He didn't really use it aside from following science and news outlets for their articles, and his Facebook hadn't been updated in months.

He stood at the center of it all, struggling to hold onto some sense of normalcy in the eye of the media storm raging around him. It was easy to act like nothing had happened during the day while he worked at the zoo, but his evenings were now spent making official statements to various media outlets, setting up interview times for his days off from work, and-by far the worst, in his opinion-seeing his name and face all over the news on television.

But he wasn't alone. His mother, despite still being puffed up with pride even several days later, was a much-needed grounding force for him in the face of his newfound celebrity. She kept him to as regular a schedule as she could, insisting that he take the time to eat dinner at home every night and that all the news reporters could wait until he'd finished doing his laundry or any other chores that needed doing. She wanted him to get the credit she felt he deserved, but she wasn't going to let him rest on his laurels, either.

And then there was Jemma. She stayed by his side every second that she could, and if she couldn't tag along to an interview or meeting, she would be waiting for him as soon as he got home. She too kept him humble; if he ever started to sound a little too self-important, she was always ready with a teasing quip to deflate his ego a little, just enough to keep him in check. She'd joked about his fame making his head so large he wouldn't be able to fit through a door, but at the same time she was the one to reassure him that he was still the same Fitz he'd been before President Beck's press conference. Discovering a doomsday comet wasn't going to change who he really was on the inside.

He knew both his mother and Jemma would be there for him on the flip side of the latest interview he'd been scheduled for. It wasn't so much an interview though as it was a sort of press conference of his own, or a town hall meeting; it was being held in the auditorium at his school and was open to the public. He would be giving an overview of his part in the discovery of the comet-and he didn't know what more he could say that he hadn't already, because there wasn't much to tell-and then he'd be taking questions from the audience. That made him exceptionally nervous, as he'd never liked being the center of attention and having to give speeches, and going into a question and answer session without a set script felt like inviting disaster.

Jemma had told him to focus on either her or his mother, and pretend like he was talking to them alone. That had been a few minutes ago, before she'd left to go find a seat in the rapidly-filling auditorium. His mother had followed shortly thereafter, though not before fussing with his tie. That left him with just Mrs. Weaver and the principal.

 _My tie_ , he thought grouchily, tugging at the offending item. Vic had suggested he dress up a bit for the assembly, so he'd shown up in a tie, his shirt tucked in, and wearing new trainers. She had taken one look at him and declared him too stuffy-looking-they wanted him to look 'approachable', whatever that meant (he didn't _want_ to be approached)-and demanded he untuck his shirt and roll his sleeves up to his elbows. That was much better, she'd said. Casual but polished. Whatever _that_ meant, too. It was the same thing the photographer from Newsweek had done the previous week. Even though it left him looking far more trendy than he actually felt, if the way Jemma's eyebrows had raised when she'd seen him was any indication, perhaps it was a look he needed to give serious consideration to cultivating.

"Five minutes," Mrs. Weaver said quietly, coming to stand next to him. "Are you nervous?"

Fitz swallowed and looked out through the wings of the stage to what he could see of the auditorium. The lights were already on and the sounds of the audience talking amongst themselves made for a dull roar in the background. "Er-yes," he admitted, fidgeting.

She gave him a reassuring smile. "Try not to worry too much. I know you've gone over your part with Ms. Hand several times already, and we'll try and keep the question and answer session as short as possible."

He smiled tightly in return. "I know. I appreciate it; I really do. It's just…" He sighed, then lowered his voice. "This is never going to feel normal."

Mrs. Weaver's smile turned sympathetic. "You've been doing very well so far, Leo. We're all proud of you."

Her support meant a lot to him, and his smile turned a touch more genuine. Then he looked up as the principal walked past them and out onto the stage to make his opening remarks. Fitz straightened and tugged at his tie again before grimacing and wiping his palms on his jeans. They were already going clammy. A moment later, he heard the principal call his name. He turned to look at Mrs. Weaver; she simply smiled at him again and motioned for him to go out onstage ahead of her.

The second he walked out from behind the curtain, a loud cheer went up amidst an explosion of camera flashes and applause. It was nearly enough to stop him in his tracks, but he managed to keep his composure, making it to the microphone with only one slight stumble of surprise. There, he took a second to get his bearings while the crowd settled down. Squinting through the brightness of the stage lights, he could see that a large portion of the audience seemed to be made up of his fellow students, come to see their suddenly-famous classmate in person. There were a good number of older citizens too, and a row of video cameras in the back of the auditorium. He swallowed, feeling a cold sweat break out on his forehead. Scanning the crowd again, he found his mother, sitting in the front row in a seat she'd had reserved for her, and-there she was. Jemma was sitting a few rows behind her, slightly to the left of center. He immediately felt a little more at ease just by seeing her, and he let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

Mrs. Weaver had taken her place with her own microphone, and she smiled at him again before launching into the lead-in they'd gone over together with Vic. She talked about the Astronomy Club and what its usual activities were, and how they'd ended up with Dr. Hall as a professional mentor. She gave the details of their fateful stargazing trip, then gestured for him to pick up the narrative.

"Right." Fitz cleared his throat and looked out at the audience. "So, Mrs. Weaver asked me to identify some stars up in the sky without looking at a chart. Normally I could do that without a problem, but-anyway, she pointed out something I didn't recognize. I'd never seen it before." He smiled slightly. "My, um, my best friend, she thought it was another star. We kind of got into an argument about it."

His eyes sought out Jemma again as a ripple of light laughter went across the audience. She was beaming at him. He felt his own smile grow in response. "So Mrs. Weaver had me take a photograph of what I saw so we could send it to Dr. Hall and get his opinion on it. And as far as we know, Dr. Hall recognized it as a comet and decided to share the discovery with me. When he was killed in that car crash, all the information they had got mixed up in Washington, so the President thought I'd died too. And that's…that's basically it."

He gave a small shrug, trying to downplay his contribution, because he honestly felt he hadn't done much. Off to his side, Mrs. Weaver nodded once at him, then stepped forward. "We'd like to take some questions from the audience now. If you'll please line up at the microphone at the front of the auditorium, we'll get started."

Fitz didn't expect the minor stampede that resulted as several people, students and adults alike, immediately stood and elbowed their way to go line up at the microphone that was situated almost directly below him in front of the stage. Once there was some semblance of order, Mrs. Weaver gestured for the girl at the front of the line to go ahead and speak.

"How does it feel having the comet named after you?" she asked.

He bit his lip and vaguely shrugged again. "It's…it's a bit strange, really, because it's a really big deal and all. And I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to take any credit away from Dr. Hall, because I'm not. But-" He smiled wryly. "Yeah, it's kind of cool, too."

The girl grinned up at him before leaving the microphone to go retake her seat. Fitz recognized the next person in line-Lance Hunter, one of his former classmates. He'd just graduated high school a few weeks previously and had a reputation for being a bit of a sarcastic wisecracker. He looked up at him, smiling widely, and Fitz had just enough time to feel a touch of apprehension before the older boy folded his arms. "You know what?" he said, still grinning. "I bet you are going to have _loads_ of sex now, more than anyone else at Lee!"

Fitz froze as a mixture of shocked gasps and amused laughs and whoops broke out over the audience, a wave of embarrassment crashing over him. Sure his face was as red as a tomato, he shot a glance at Mrs. Weaver. She looked thoroughly unimpressed, frowning down at Hunter with her own arms crossed. He was _not_ going to look at his mother. Or Vic. He could only imagine how high her blood pressure had just shot.

"Seriously! Famous people always get sex, Mrs. Weaver, and Fitz is famous now!" Hunter added, much to the delight of the other students in the crowd. He winked up at him. "That's the best part of being famous, yeah?"

Fitz felt himself shrink behind the podium as his cheeks flamed even hotter. God, he hoped no one was livestreaming this.

"Thank you for your sexual insight, Mr. Hunter," Mrs. Weaver said severely. "You can sit down now."

Trying to stretch out his own limited time in the spotlight, Hunter turned and bowed twice to the crowd before leaving to take his seat again, as the other teens in the audience cheered him on. Without thinking, Fitz looked for Jemma again in the crowd. Someone in the row behind her-Callie, it looked like-was leaning forward to say something in her ear. Whatever it was, it made Jemma's jaw drop slightly, and she spun quickly in her seat to face forward. Their eyes met then, and she did something very strange. She ducked her head, as if she couldn't quite look at him, then smiled almost bashfully.

She didn't stop smiling at him for the rest of the assembly.

-:-

When Jemma walked into Fitz's room shortly after he got home later that afternoon, she found him lying face-down on his bed, his head hidden beneath the pillow.

Before she could say anything, he mumbled, "I am never leaving this house, ever again."

"Why's that?" she asked, an unmistakable hint of amusement lacing her voice.

He pulled his pillow off his head, sending his curls into disarray, and looked up at her, aghast. "Seriously?" he demanded. "That was, hands down, the most humiliating experience of my life. You saw how many people were recording it on their phones! It's probably all over the bloody internet by now, 'Leo Fitz confirmed for being a virgin'."

When Jemma only rolled her eyes at him, he groaned and shifted onto his side, facing the wall and clutching his pillow to his chest. He wouldn't be getting any sympathy from her either, then. His own mother had laughed at him afterward, and Vic had chastised him for stammering.

"Fitz, please," Jemma said, and he felt her fingers prod at his shoulder. "There are worse things that could have happened. And anyway, I thought you handled it very well!"

"Did I?" he grumbled. "Because my face still feels like Chernobyl."

He heard her give an exasperated sigh. "Does that mean you won't sign this for me, then?"

Fitz frowned, confused. "What?" Then he rolled onto his back to look up at her where she stood next to his bed, holding up a copy of _Newsweek_ with him on the cover- _Fitz Alive! Student Astronomer Leo Fitz on the Discovery of the Century_ -and grinning cheekily.

"Oh, mother of-" he cried, sitting up and swiping it from her hands. "Christ, Jemma, not you too!"

Her laughter followed him as he stood up and crossed to the other side of the room with half a mind to toss the magazine in the trash. "Sorry," she said, not sounding sorry at all. "I couldn't help myself. And I really would like you to sign it!"

"Why?" he asked. "It's-ugh, I can't even look at it." He dropped it on the floor where he stood, as if it had burned him.

Jemma raised her eyebrows as she sat down on the end of his bed. "Why not? You look-" She paused as words seemed to fail her.

"Like a tosser?" he supplied.

"No!" She waved her hands about. "Not at all. You looked really nice! There, on the magazine, and today too. You-clean up really well." She did the strange thing again, ducking her head so she wasn't looking at him. "Dark red's a lovely color on you."

He tilted his head at her. "Thanks, I think," he said, pleased with her assessment of his looks but not sure if 'lovely' was the sort of adjective he wanted applied to him. Then he sighed and moved to take a seat next to her on the bed. "I'm just glad we're out on summer holiday right now. If we had school on Monday I would _never_ hear the end of it."

"Are you really that upset about it?" Jemma asked, her tone gentling.

He shrugged expressively. "I don't know. It was awful when he said it; I think my face went as red as my shirt. He might as well have stamped 'total virgin' across my face. I've never even had a girlfriend! I mean, I'm-I'm not in any rush to lose it-" He couldn't believe he was talking about this with _Jemma_. "But I could do without the staring and the judging."

"You could have one, you know," Jemma said, looking down at her lap. "If you wanted to."

Fitz frowned. "Have a what?"

"A girlfriend," she replied, rolling her eyes at him again.

He screwed his face up. "What-I mean, why would-what are you on about?"

Jemma gave him another look before returning her gaze to her lap, fingers picking at a loose thread on the cuff of her shorts. "Hunter was right," she said. "I heard some of the other girls in our class talking before the assembly. They, ah...they sounded very _keen_."

Fitz felt his face flush at what she was implying. It was just as uncomfortable for her to think about as well, apparently, because he could see a spot of pink high on her cheek. Their conversation had definitely taken a turn for the bizarre; they had never spoken about anything even _approaching_ sex before. He grimaced and shook his head.

"I'm going to assume you mean Raina and her friends," he muttered. "And not Callie. Because she wouldn't…which is...I mean, _I_ wouldn't-they- _no_. Just no. They've never given me the time of day before and besides, I haven't forgotten that she called you a bossy know-it-all in math class last year and made you cry."

Jemma made a sour face before looking at him and giving him a bracing smile. "This isn't about me. This is about how you're _famous Leo Fitz_ and now suddenly every girl in school wants to-to get a leg up on you." She scrunched her nose, as if the very thought disgusted her, and sighed. "You've got your pick of the lot. Really."

He would have given the slight hitch in her voice, and the fact that the idea of _him_ and _sex_ was evidently repulsive to her, more thought if he weren't so busy making an aggrieved noise and covering his face with his hands. He wouldn't deny that the idea of girls being interested in him was a bit thrilling-if foreign-and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't considered it for one shameful second, but it would have been for all the wrong reasons. They didn't want _him_. They just wanted the fame of being associated with him.

"I don't _want_ them to get a leg up," he complained, falling backward onto the bed. He really could not stress enough how much he didn't want anything to do with any of those other girls. "I-I mean, despite the whole virgin thing I'm perfectly fine not having a-I don't-I don't even _want_ a girlfriend. I just...I want…"

Jemma was watching him closely, her eyes curious. "You want…?" she prompted.

He swallowed thickly.

 _I want you._

But he couldn't tell her that, not ever. She only saw him as a friend; he was still certain of that. She didn't go for guys like him. And he couldn't ruin the most important relationship in his life by confessing all of his feelings and making things awkward. He briefly closed his eyes.

"I...I want things to be like how they were. Before all of _this_." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the magazine on the floor. "You know me-"

"You hate change," Jemma murmured. "I know." When he looked up at her, she'd twisted slightly on the bed to face him, and her expression was...odd. Sort of. She looked very guarded-and that was a face he didn't think he'd ever seen on her. Then she sighed and looked away again, her eyes falling back to her lap.

Not liking how the air between them suddenly felt weird, Fitz cast about for something to say to bring things back under control. "Hey," he said, reaching out to gently rap his knuckles against her arm. "It _is_ about you, Jemma. If it's about me, I mean. Raina could-I don't know, she could be really nice to me but I still wouldn't like her, because she made you cry. That's just not on." When he saw a small smile appear on her face, he rushed on. "Sure, you _are_ a know-it-all, but you're not _bossy_."

"Hey!" Jemma exclaimed, lightly kicking his foot, but she was smiling even wider.

Fitz laughed, making an exaggerated face, as if she'd really wounded him. "No! It's fine, I promise. I like that about you."

Her gaze softened a bit. "Really?"

He grinned. "Well, yeah. How else would you be able to keep up with Leo Fitz, world-famous astronomer-"

He was interrupted by Jemma shoving him, hard enough to roll him onto his side away from her. He held up his arms to shield himself from any further blows, laughing again, and was gratified to hear her squawking indignantly. "Prat!" she cried, but there was an unmistakable touch of fondness to her voice.

Fitz pushed himself back up to sit next to her, fending off one more half-hearted shove before schooling his expression into something much more genuine. "Really though," he said, and smiled. "I really do."

Jemma beamed at him before she stood, going to retrieve the magazine off the floor. Fitz watched her go, pleased, feeling like they were back to rights. Everything was changing around them-the comet, his sudden fame, the knowledge that a global disaster was approaching-but, for this moment, Jemma Simmons was still his best friend. That was one thing he knew now would never change for the worse. And that meant more to him than anything else in the world.


	5. Chapter 5

If Fitz thought that his schoolmates would gradually forget about his not-so-little contribution to science over the summer, he was sorely mistaken.

Their first morning back at school, heads turned to watch as he and Jemma walked together from the student parking lot toward the front doors. Some of the people closest to them smiled and waved, trying to get his attention; others leaned in to their friends to whisper amongst themselves. Fitz just smiled awkwardly and nodded at them, ducking his head and walking fast like he'd learned to do with reporters. By the time he finally made it to his locker, he had been stopped no less than four times by people wanting selfies or his autograph. Not wanting to come across as a complete and total arse, he'd obliged all of them.

"I'm glad you think this is so funny," he grumbled at Jemma as he stuffed his backpack inside his locker. She was doing a poor job at concealing her amusement, her eyes dancing as she smiled at him. "Aren't they bored of it by now? Isn't there something on the telly they can talk about, instead of me? They didn't give a damn _before_."

Jemma shut the door to her own locker and bit her lip to keep from smiling even more. "Well, you _did_ sort of change the course of human history."

Fitz rolled his eyes. "No, _I_ didn't. The bloody comet did." He turned and shifted his notebooks to one arm while he pulled his schedule from his pocket, opening it to see which classroom they needed to find first. "When you put it like that, you make me sound like…" He made a face as he trailed off, concentrating on his mental map of the school. After a pause, he set off in the direction of first-period Honors English.

"Like the brilliant amateur astronomer and scholar that you are?" Jemma asked, falling into step beside him.

He shook his head irritably. "Like someone important." Then he cringed as he accidentally made eye contact with another student at their locker, whose face lit up like a hunter that had found its prey. "Oh, bollocks-Jemma-please don't leave-" He reached out to catch her arm as the student-a senior he vaguely recognized-made a beeline for him, phone already out. But he needn't have asked. Jemma waited patiently while Fitz grudgingly took a selfie with the older boy, hiding another smile behind her hand as he threw his arm around Fitz's shoulders like they were old friends. When it was over, she stepped in and quickly pulled him away down the hall from the other students who had started to home in on him. They made it to their classroom with only one more interruption.

Once they walked in, Fitz knew a moment of apprehension. Until he'd met Jemma, he'd always preferred to sit in the back of the classroom and keep his head down-the better to keep himself from giving his fellow students reasons to tease him. But Jemma, who was confident in ways he didn't think he'd ever manage, liked to sit front and center so she could be the first to participate in class discussions. Once they became friends, he couldn't help but be drawn into her orbit, and eventually he'd abandoned the back row to sit next to her in all the classes they had together. He'd never minded it until this moment. Fresh from running the gauntlet of staring eyes outside and in the hall, he wasn't looking forward to a full day-really, the first day of an entire school year-of sitting in his usual seat up front, feeling the eyes of his entire class burning into the back of his head.

So when Jemma bypassed her usual seat to head straight for the back, Fitz nearly stopped in surprise. Instead, he hurried down the next row to take the seat in the corner, trying to ignore the looks of the students who had already arrived. "You don't want to sit up front?" he whispered.

Jemma smiled gently at him as she arranged her notebook and pens neatly on her desk. "I thought you might not want to," she murmured in return.

A rush of gratitude hit him, and Fitz couldn't help but smile back. She'd tease him about being famous, yes, but she wasn't going to let him be truly uncomfortable-not if she could help it. "Thanks," he said, and tried to tell her with his smile what he couldn't say in so many words.

He only wished that everyone else would be as considerate. When the bell rang and their teacher began class, she wanted Fitz to tell everyone what it was like to give an interview to the professional press. What that had to do with contemporary American literature, he didn't know, but he tried to answer her all the same. In math class, his teacher wanted to know anything he could tell about any of the scientists and talking heads he'd appeared on news shows with (which wasn't much). In Physics, his teacher actually left him alone for the most part-the astronauts selected for the _Messiah_ mission had departed for the space station just a few days prior, to great fanfare, and most of the class discussion was focused on that-but a few of his classmates still wanted to know what he thought of everything.

And that was all _before_ lunch.

Fitz had barely set his tray down next to Jemma when he felt someone come up on his other side. Sighing, he looked up to see that it was a red-haired girl, a freshman by the looks of her, anxiously clutching her phone to her chest. "Sorry," she said, "but-can I get a picture with you?"

He swallowed down his immediate, instinctual retort of _no_ and forced himself to nod. "Yeah. Uh, sure. Here." He swivelled on his seat to face her; grinning, the girl turned to crouch down next to him and held out her phone. He only just managed to keep his face neutral as she took the photo. He wasn't going to be a jerk and refuse people, but that didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

Pleased with her prize, the girl smiled brightly at him. "Thanks, Leo!" she chirped, and ran back to join her friends.

Fitz winced. Definitely a freshman then, if she called him that. Jemma watched as the girl's friends gathered excitedly around her, demanding to see the picture, then turned back to him with a grin. "You know, it wouldn't hurt you to smile every once in awhile," she said lightly. "I think you're starting to get a reputation."

He ignored her, electing instead to shove half a chicken finger into his mouth. "Can't a man eat his lunch in peace?" he groused as he chewed.

Jemma wrinkled her nose at him before spearing a forkful of her salad. "Ooh, you _are_ a grumpus today."

Sighing, he took a second bite of chicken before hunching over slightly, determined not to make eye contact with anyone else in the cafeteria. If he sulked enough, maybe they would get the message and leave him alone. "Do you blame me?"

"Not really."

They ate in silence for a few minutes before Jemma's phone buzzed. Picking it up to check the alert, she hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe some compliments will cheer you up," she said, beginning to scroll through one of her apps. "Let's see what they're saying about you on my Instagram today, hmm?"

Fitz closed his eyes briefly. Shortly after he'd become a household name, some intrepid internet sleuth had come across Jemma's Instagram, realized it contained many photos of him, and alerted the rest of the world to it. Much like his Twitter had gained a landslide of followers, her Instagram was now very popular. She'd received so many comments from people going through all of her old pictures of him that she'd had to disable notifications from the app on her phone, because it was draining her battery. It didn't stop her from checking sometimes, though-for reasons Fitz had yet to fathom, Jemma actually liked reading all the various comments. He suspected it was part of her mission to keep him humble while keeping herself amused.

"Well, there's the usual people begging me to post more pictures of you," she said, still scrolling. "And the usual people asking if I'm your girlfriend."

He snuck a sideways glance at her as he took a bite of his mashed potatoes. She looked unaffected by the idea that complete strangers thought they were dating-but then, she always did. He tried not to let her nonchalance get to him, but it still stung slightly. He didn't know which would be worse: her not caring, or her hating it. Swallowing, he said, "I still don't understand why you bother reading all those comments.".

"I like keeping up with what people say about you!" Now there was an inexplicable flush of pink in Jemma's cheeks, though she kept her eyes trained firmly on her phone. "Because if anyone says anything horrible, then _I'll_ have something to say about it. Oh, this person has some nice things to say about your hair." She flashed him a grin and he rolled his eyes. In his opinion, his hair made him look like an unkempt poodle on the best of days. She tapped and scrolled a little bit more, and then her eyebrows went up. "Oh! This is a new one."

"What?" he asked warily.

Jemma was struggling not to smile. "This person here is, ah, very complimentary of your hands."

"What?" he repeated, this time confused. "My hands? That's, uh...why?"

She held up her phone so he could see. It was a photo of him she'd taken over the summer, delicately holding up a prototype he'd built, eyes focused as he tightened a joint with a screwdriver. He didn't see what was so special about the photo, or his hands. "I don't get it," he said. "I'm just holding one of the drones."

Jemma leaned forward to look at her phone, then pointed out the comment she'd referred to. "It's this one," she said, and he leaned in as well, squinting.

 _Look at his gorgeous large hands! And those long fingers! We all know what that means. ;)_

Fitz was even more confused. "'We all know what that means'? What _does_ that mean?"

Jemma pulled her phone back. "You mean you've never heard what people say about men with large hands?"

He frowned, slightly unnerved by the fact that she was now studiously not looking at him, biting her lip as her cheeks flushed pink again. "No," he said slowly, "and I'm not sure that I want to."

"Hmm." Jemma pursed her lips, reaching up to rest one hand against her neck. He recognized it as one of her nervous tics. "Well then." When she didn't elaborate any further, simply going back to scrolling through her phone, Fitz gave her one last suspicious look before turning back to his lunch. If she wasn't going to tell him, he probably _really_ didn't want to know.

However, by the time he left lunch to go to 6th period German, it was starting to bug him. He never could stand not knowing something, and this was no exception. Jemma didn't share this class with him, though-she was off taking Psychology for her elective-and he was just pulling out his phone to run a search when someone dropped noisily into the seat next to him. Startled, he looked up to see that it was Callie.

"Hey, Fitz!" she said brightly. "Mind if I sit here?"

He paused with his finger hovering over the screen of his phone. "Uh, no, I guess not, no."

She smiled. "Good. I'm glad there's someone else I know in here."

Fitz gave her a slightly wary look as she opened her notebook to the first blank page and fiddled with her pen. He really didn't know Callie all that well, and suspected she was only kind to him because she was friends with Jemma, but...she didn't look like she wanted to ask about the comet, or request a picture with him. Her own phone was nowhere in sight. If she was going to treat him normally, he certainly wasn't going to argue. Feeling a brief pulse of gratitude in his chest, he turned back to his phone.

It only took him a second to run a search on what men with big hands meant. When the first results came up, he stared at them in horror for a few seconds before his face started burning.

"Oh my god," he whispered.

"Hmm?" Callie looked up, then frowned. "Are you okay? Your face is red as a beet."

Fitz hastily swiped to the side, clearing the browser from his list of running apps, and coughed. "Uh. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm-good."

She didn't look convinced. "You sure?" She looked around at the slowly-filling classroom. "Did someone say something to you?"

If he weren't so completely embarrassed, he would have found Callie's concern to be almost touching. It felt like Jemma and his mum were the only people who truly cared about how he felt these days. He shoved his phone back into his pocket. "Er, no, not-not really. I mean, it was just something on Jemma's Instagram," he mumbled.

Callie's eyes brightened in understanding. "Jemma told me it's been taken over by girls going on about how hot you are," she said, smiling mischievously. Fitz sunk lower in his seat, feeling his cheeks burn even more. "What happened, did one of them say they wanted to do terrible, dirty things to you?"

"No." Fitz shifted uncomfortably. "They, uh-they said I had nice hands?"

"Was that it? That's not so bad, why-oh!" Callie's eyes went wide as she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. "Oh my god! They didn't!"

As she dissolved into giggles, still hiding a wide grin behind her hand, Fitz considered revising his opinion on Callie. Her clear amusement at his discomfort reminded him a bit too much of Jemma's. Furthermore, was he seriously the only person who had never heard about the theory regarding men with large hands? And how unfair was it that both Jemma and Callie knew, and both were having a laugh at his expense? How could he have been so clueless in front of them? Surely that was why Jemma hadn't told him at lunch. That, or she was too embarrassed herself to tell.

(Because Jemma thinking that he was, well, _well-endowed_ was just...he couldn't think about it. At all. Knowing complete strangers were thinking it was weird and mortifying enough, but adding Jemma and now Callie to the mix-he had to fight the urge to shift in his seat and adjust himself.)

"So," Callie asked, twisting in her seat to face him. "Is it true?"

"Is what true?" he muttered, feigning ignorance.

"You know." She leaned across the aisle toward him, dropping her voice to a whisper. "Do you have a big-"

"Like I would know!" Fitz cut her off with a hiss, shooting her a scandalized glare. "We-we don't exactly stand around in the locker room after gym, comparing!"

Callie burst out laughing again, then tried to quiet down as at least one other classmate turned to look curiously at them. "You don't?" she said, giving him an exaggerated pout. "That's too bad."

Fitz faced stiffly forward, cheeks still burning and his entire face pulled down into a scowl. "I am not talking to you anymore."

In his periphery, he saw Callie snort before turning to face forward too. "You _do_ have large hands, though," she whispered as the final bell rang.

Without meaning to, he looked down at his hands, which were clasped tightly over his textbook. He shook his head. Maybe he did have large hands, but correlation did not necessarily imply causation. He didn't think his physical attributes were anything to be ashamed of, but he didn't really think they were anything to brag about, either. Anyway, he tried to reason to himself, it was a silly thing, the type of 'fact' he would expect to see in a magazine like Cosmopolitan or something of that ilk. Something that girls like Callie giggled about together. _Not_ something that his best friend would bother herself with, not about him.

Still, the mere thought that the idea had gone through Jemma's mind was enough to make him want to groan and drop his head down onto his desk. Maybe this was his just comeuppance for spending probably an unreasonable amount of time wondering how perfectly her breasts might fit into his hands.

At that, Fitz really did have to fight off a groan. That wasn't something he needed to be thinking about Jemma, especially while he was at school. They were friends, as he constantly had to remind himself-nothing more, and letting himself go down that path of longing was a surefire way to even more embarrassment.

When he walked into his last class of the day, Jemma was already seated in the back row. As if sensing his presence, she looked up at him and smiled as he made his way to take the seat next to her. The way she lit up made his stomach churn slightly, and against his will he felt his face flush again.

"How was German?" she asked as he sat down.

Fitz tried his absolute best to be casual. "Eh, it was fine, nothing mind-blowing," he shrugged, then deflected back to her. "What about Psychology?"

Jemma's eyes shone even brighter. "Good! Like you said, nothing mind-blowing, not today anyway, but I think I'll like it. Mrs. Barker said that since it's an honors elective, we'll be going over topics a bit more advanced and in-depth than a regular class."

He smiled faintly and concentrated on flipping through his World History textbook, happy to let her prattle on as long as her attention wasn't entirely focused on him. She did for a moment or two, talking about how she'd skipped ahead to read the chapter on abnormal psychology, until she stopped mid-sentence and peered closely at him. "Fitz? Are you okay?"

Her echo of Callie's question the previous hour made his mouth twitch. "What? Uh, yeah, I'm fine-why?"

Jemma shrugged lightly. "Your face is red, that's all."

Again, the similarity to Callie made him squirm. "Is it?" he asked, and winced when his voice cracked. "I just-yeah, I ran into some people in the hall who wanted selfies. Again." It wasn't a lie, but she didn't have to know he was twisting the real truth. "It's humiliating."

She nodded and clucked softly, then smiled sideways at him. "Do I need to bring up Instagram again for more compliments?"

He gulped. "No! No no, that's fine, uh-I've had enough of Instagram today, thanks. Trust me, my ego is _well_ in check."

Jemma stared at him for a few seconds too long, one eyebrow arching up in a question. Then she bit her lip. "I was just kidding, Fitz," she said, far more gently than he expected. "Don't worry. I know today's been hard for you."

A little shamefaced, Fitz looked away from her, down at his hands. Then he grimaced and moved to shove them into his lap where he couldn't see them.

"Only fifty more minutes and we can go home," Jemma added. "Maybe we can act like we've got somewhere we have to be, and that way you won't have to stop for anyone else."

Fitz felt a little of the tension ease out of him, along with some of his embarrassment. True to her word, when class ended and the final bell of the day rang, Jemma took firm hold of his wrist and pulled him through the halls to their lockers and then the parking lot, deftly dodging anyone who looked like they wanted to stop them. Part of him wanted to protest that he could manage fine on his own, but he didn't dare rebuff Jemma's support. Not when her slim fingers wrapped around his arm left his skin tingling at the contact.

"How did school go?" his mother asked when she came home from work.

"It was rubbish," he said, and buried his nose back in his Physics textbook.

She frowned at him before shaking her head and continuing on into the kitchen. Fitz spent the rest of his evening firmly focused on what little homework he had and preparing for the rest of the semester-anything to keep him from thinking about how embarrassed he'd been at school and what random girls he didn't even know had to say about him. As he climbed into bed that night, he felt like he'd been successful. Rolling over to face the wall and crossing his arms over his chest, he smiled into the darkness. He was the master of his feelings and emotions again; everything was tucked safely away, and he was not going to blush when he saw Jemma in the morning.

But all of that certainty didn't stop him from having dreams about her that were entirely too pleasant, and left him gasping for air when he woke up the next morning, a dull ache lodged firmly in his stomach.


	6. Chapter 6

As the weeks passed and fall gradually slipped into winter, Fitz realized that-aside from the inconvenience of being famous-not much had actually changed in his world. Society and life as he knew it carried on in much the same fashion as it had before the news of the comet hit. He went to school; people went to work; families took planned vacations, and his high school football team went on to play in the championship just like they did every year. The same commercials showed on TV; films and plays premiered; bands still went on tour. It was very easy for Fitz to convince himself that nothing had really changed at all, or that the comet was simply on a near-miss course instead of heading straight for them.

That feeling of optimism and hope pervaded through the Christmas holidays. Fitz spent Christmas Eve at Jemma's house and they exchanged gifts, the same as every year since they'd met. Fitz received a book on advanced robotics that he'd been eyeing for awhile, and Jemma seemed very pleased with the delicate pendant necklace he'd replicated for her.

"I know it's really, uh-really girly, but I saw how much you liked the real one at the mall," he said, ducking his head. Jemma had immediately put the necklace on and gone to the mirror hanging in the entryway to admire it.

"It's beautiful," she said, gently touching the tiny, dark stone wrapped in wire. "Where did you find the materials?"

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hands on his hips. "Oh, around," he replied. "And for a lot cheaper than what the actual necklace cost." Then his eyes widened. "Not that it was _cheap_ , mind, just-you know-cheaper than that outrageous price the store wanted. And I think mine's of higher quality, too."

Jemma looked up to smile at his reflection in the mirror. "Of course it is, _you_ made it." He smiled back, ducking his head again and scuffing his shoe against the hardwood floor. "Kind of makes the book I got you pale in comparison though, doesn't it?"

His head shot up. "No! No, not at all. I've wanted it for ages, you know that. It'll keep me busy for at _least_ two days."

She laughed out loud, leaning in to bump her shoulder against his, and Fitz revelled in the way her laughter lit up her face. "Two days, right. That's good to know. I expect nothing less from you." Beaming, she motioned for him to follow her back into the living room. "Come on, I think there's still some pudding left."

Christmas morning was just him and his mum, the way it had been for as long as he could remember. She woke him up early with breakfast already made for the both of them, and then they drank tea while unwrapping presents. Jemma came over after lunch to tell him all about the other gifts she'd received, and sometime in the late afternoon-miracle of miracles-it began to snow. Bundling up excitedly in their coats and scarves, they both went outside to enjoy it.

The snowfall wasn't heavy, so they couldn't do much more than try to catch snowflakes on their tongues, but it didn't stop them from scraping up what meager handfuls of snow they could and flinging it at each other. By the time Jemma left to go home, they'd even managed to build the tiniest of snowmen just off his front walk.

A week later, as they stood gathered around the television in his living room, ringing in the new year with a glass of wine, Fitz thought to himself that if this was what the world facing annihilation looked like, maybe it wasn't so bad, after all. There was a solid plan in place to drive the comet off its course and he had every faith that it would succeed. Everything would still be the same in a year's time. This time next year, he would still be standing next to Jemma, cheerfully counting down the seconds along with the crowd in Times Square on the television.

School let out early on a Wednesday in late January, in honor of the _Messiah_ mission finally reaching its destination: the crew was scheduled to land on the comet's surface early in the afternoon. The building emptied quickly, students and teachers alike anxious to hurry home so they wouldn't miss a thing.

The university had cancelled classes for the day too, so his mother was home by the time he got there. Not long afterward, Jemma arrived with her parents, who had taken off early from work. For the first time since they learned of the comet's existence, it felt like life was truly coming to a standstill as the entire world prepared to watch with bated breath the actions of one tiny crew of astronauts out in the far reaches of space.

A livestream of the broadcast was being shown at the city civic center, and Fitz had been invited to make an appearance. Against Vic's suggestion, he had politely declined, not liking the idea of having to spend hours in public watching what was sure to be a nerve-wracking event. He wanted to be at home, away from prying eyes, with just his mother, Jemma, and her parents. Thankfully, Vic had let it slide.

Everyone was firmly ensconced in the living room by the time the news broadcast started: Fitz's mum and Jemma's parents on the couch, and Fitz himself tucked into the loveseat next to Jemma. On the television, a digital recreation of the _Messiah_ spacecraft flew across the screen before it cut to the newsroom and the anchor overseeing the segment.

"Good afternoon," she said. "Sometime in the next hour, the _Messiah_ mission will enter its most critical phase: the interception of Fitz-Hall and the setting of the nuclear devices that will deflect it off its collision course with Earth."

Fitz fidgeted slightly in his seat. It had been seven months and he _still_ wasn't used to hearing his name on national TV.

"But first, Captain Spurgeon Tanner will have to guide the spacecraft through the blizzard of rocks, sand, and ice that makes up the comet's tail, or coma. The crew will have to complete its work before the sun rises." On the large flatscreen display behind the anchor, an image of the comet dissolved into a video feed of the interior cargo bay of the _Messiah_ , shot through with static. Four of the crew members were strapped down inside, all wearing full space suits. "Behind me are images from cameras mounted inside the cargo bay of the _Messiah_ ," the anchor added. "Now, these images are delayed by approximately twenty seconds due to the distance they must travel."

The video link started to fritz even more. The anchor turned to look at the screen and frowned. "Okay, you can see that the image is breaking up a bit." She paused. "Houston is prepared for this. They've informed us that due to the uncertain makeup of the comet's coma, they're unsure whether or not transmission will be possible."

As if on cue, the video cut out. When it didn't come back on, the anchor faced front again, looking uncertain. As she began to speak, Jemma's father shook his head. "Well, that didn't take long at all."

"We're lucky we got even that much," Jemma said. "I think it's a miracle we had any video at all, considering how far away they are."

Setting the television remote down on the side table with a sigh, Fitz's mother stood up. "They said earlier it would take a long time for them to do the drilling. I might as well go see about getting us dinner. Come and get me if anything happens?" Mrs. Simmons murmured an assent, and Mrs. Fitz turned to go into the kitchen.

After half an hour, the video link still hadn't come back online, and a few specialists had gathered at the news desk to discuss different aspects of the mission with the anchor. When Mrs. Fitz came back out with sandwiches for everyone, Fitz wolfed down two of them while Jemma barely picked at hers. When he shot her a questioning look, she gave him a weak smile. She was clearly nervous.

As the hours wore on and afternoon changed to evening, Fitz found it was catching. The longer the broadcast went on without the video link to the _Messiah_ , the more uneasy he felt, no matter how hard he tried to push it away. He knew the lack of video contact wasn't really anything to worry about; NASA had said they expected it. But as the clock on the bottom corner of the screen ticked down to the comet's sunrise, he could feel the tension in the room rising. He had no doubt that it was the same everywhere else.

When the clock hit zero, Fitz glanced at Jemma. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the arm of the loveseat, and it was all he could do not to take her other hand between his and squeeze it. Across from them, Mr. Simmons' arms were crossed tightly over his chest and his mother was twisting the remote in her hands.

Onscreen, the news anchor had fallen silent, turning to look at the flatscreen behind her, which still showed static. "If everything has gone according to schedule, it will still take a few minutes for the _Messiah_ to leave the comet's tail. We should be able to get a video signal back from the ship then. Just stay with us."

As if anyone would dare to change the channel now. Fitz could feel himself leaning forward in his seat, his nerves on edge. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the video link flickered back to life, shorting out several times before settling on an image of Captain Tanner. He looked grim.

"Houston, the MOLEs are at depth, nukes hot and ready," he said. Then he paused. "We lost Partenza to explosive outgassing...and Monash is injured."

Something clenched in Fitz's gut, and he bit his lip hard. Maybe he had been right to be uneasy. It wasn't that he had expected the mission to go flawlessly, but a man was dead now. It was a definite turn for the worse. The buoyant optimism he'd felt that morning was rapidly evaporating.

On the television, the video of the _Messiah_ cut away to a file photo of Partenza, the anchor's voice solemn as she outlined his many accomplishments and dedication to science. Next to Fitz, Jemma frowned, her face pale. Mrs. Simmons murmured something under her breath that sounded like "shame."

No one said anything else until the anchor tipped a finger to the mic in her ear, then straightened with purpose. "The _Messiah_ has successfully docked with the Orion-powered boosters and is now prepared to detonate the bombs planted on Fitz-Hall," she said. "The _Messiah's_ exterior-mounted camera will show us the detonation, but not before being temporarily blocked out by the nuclear blast. Once again, let me remind you there is a twenty-second delay, so when the picture comes back to us, the comet should already be knocked off its present course."

Fitz tensed in his seat. This was it-this was the moment they'd been waiting for all evening-all year, really-the moment that would determine the course of the entire world. He startled when he felt warmth on his hand; Jemma had reached out to cover his with her own, sliding her fingers between his and squeezing tightly. He looked at her with wide eyes, his breath caught in his throat. She merely pressed her lips down into a thin line and looked back to the television.

When he turned his attention back to the TV as well, the flatscreen behind the anchor showed the view from the exterior _Messiah_ camera. The rocket boosters stretched out behind it on the top of the screen and, some distance back, was the comet. Fitz found himself oddly fascinated, in a detached sort of way, by how it seemed to tumble slowly through space, the hazy blue-white wisps of the dust trail flowing out and back from it. It was unprecedented footage of a comet. If it were being recorded for any other reason, he would have been thrilled at the science of it. Now, he just felt a nervousness so tight his shoulder muscles were beginning to protest.

Suddenly, a bright white light burst from the center of the comet, expanding rapidly outward. Before it could reach the _Messiah_ , the video distorted sharply before blinking out.

The anchor, her hand raised to her ear again, looked back and forth from the flatscreen to the camera in front of her. "Hang on-Houston says they're trying to reestablish video contact. Give us just a minute."

On the couch, Mr. Simmons leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, hands framing his face. Mrs. Simmons sat up straighter. Mrs. Fitz clutched a small pillow in her lap, while Jemma's grip on his hand tightened.

But the video was never restored.

After a few moments of nearly unbearable silence, another feed interrupted the broadcast. The image of President Beck sitting at his desk in the Oval Office was a little jarring, and more than a bit ominous. He paused before taking a deep breath.

"Hello, America," he said gravely. "It is my unhappy duty to report to you that the _Messiah_ mission has failed."

Fitz's breath congealed in his throat. He heard Mrs. Simmons make a small noise, and Jemma's hand went slack over his.

"This computer-enhanced radar image from Houston shows how the detonation succeeded, but, however, did not destroy the comet." An inset image in the top corner of the screen showed a rough simulation of the explosion: a smaller chunk of the comet had separated off from the front of it. "There are now two pieces, one six miles wide, the other a mile and a half. Both are still on a path towards Earth. We've lost communication with the _Messiah_ spacecraft, although we continue to track it visually. We don't know how many are alive. We don't know their condition."

Fitz closed his eyes as a numb sort of horror overtook him. He couldn't process what the President was saying. All he could hear was the word _failed_ repeating over and over again in his head.

 _Failed._ They'd failed. _Failed._ The comet was still there. _Failed._ It was still headed for Earth.

 _Failed._

The death of his hope and faith was a harsh punch to the gut. He couldn't breathe. The future ahead of them was crumbling now; time was finite. Was there anything else left to do? He barely registered President Beck still talking onscreen, giving the details of a planned strategic missile strike coordinated with Russia. But what did that matter? The missiles could only be launched when the comet was mere hours away. By that time, it would be far too late to do anything else if that plan didn't succeed. The Earth was doomed.

Next to him, Jemma was blinking rapidly, her throat bobbing as she swallowed thickly. She looked devastated.

"While we are confident the missile attack will succeed," the President continued, "it is only prudent that we now take cautionary steps to ensure the continuation of our way of life, to guarantee that there will be enough of us left to rebuild a new world in the unlikely event that the comets do strike the Earth."

 _Unlikely_ , Fitz thought morbidly. _Hah_.

"So, in the soft limestone of Missouri, we've been preparing a network of immense caves, and they're almost finished. They can hold a million people. That million people can survive underground for two years, until the air clears and the dust settles. The cave is more than a dormitory-it's our new Noah's Ark. We're storing seeds and seedlings, plants, animals…enough to start over.

"On August 10th, a computer will randomly select 800,000 Americans to join the 200,000 scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers, soldiers, and artists who have already been chosen. Other countries are preparing similar caves along whatever lines they feel are best to preserve their way of life. This is ours."

Fitz felt his heart sink even further. It didn't take a genius to do the math: one million out of three hundred and nine total was a pittance. It wasn't even the total population of the Richmond metro area. The chances of any of their numbers being pulled in the lottery were slim to none.

They were going to be left to die.

"Beginning tonight and continuing until the crisis passes, I am declaring a state of martial law," President Beck said. "The armed forces and the National Guard are working with local law enforcement. A national curfew begins at midnight tonight. Now, wherever you are, go home. Stay off the roads after sunset. Crimes against persons or property will be dealt with swiftly and harshly. News stations around the nation are being faxed copies of the lottery procedure as we speak, and they'll be broadcasting the details to you in a few moments."

"Christ," Mr. Simmons muttered, dragging a hand over his face. Next to him, Mrs. Simmons had one hand over her mouth.

President Beck made a few more remarks before the screen cut back to the anchor at MSNBC, who looked visibly shaken. Someone put a piece of paper down in front of her, and she cleared her throat as she picked it up to read from it. "We-we now have the details for the national lottery," she said. "Those of you who have been pre-selected will be notified within the next few minutes. For the rest, on the night of August 10th, those whose Social Security numbers have been randomly selected by computer will be notified. While some Americans over 50 years of age have been pre-selected for the Ark, due to their expertise in a necessary field of study, no men or women over 50 in the general population will be included in the lottery."

Fitz looked over at his mother as she let out a breath. Their parents were all in their mid-forties. He could see the relief on their faces, however futile he felt it to be. The numbers were still stacked heavily against them.

"The evacuation of those who have been selected for the Ark will take no longer than two days beginning on August 12th. During this two-day period, no unofficial travel will be permitted. Those selected will be taken by bus and train to the underground Ark site by military personnel. Civil defense teams have been formed in every town with a population over 5,000. They will distribute supplies and organize group shelters in underground parking facilities and other appropriate sites. Construction plans, equipment lists, and locations for securing the necessary provisions, along with…"

The anchor's voice faded out as the full reality of what was happening began to sink in. They were under martial law now. He wondered if school and work would be canceled, and if so, what they would do in the months remaining. Plans were being put in place for shelters. They would become refugees in their own homes. The scope of it was staggering; life as they knew it was truly over.

He was so focused on his internal musings that he almost didn't hear his mother's phone ring. He looked over at her as she picked it up from the side table and swiped a thumb across it to answer. "Hello?" she asked. "Yes, this is Karen Fitz." She listened for a moment; then her face paled as she looked across at him. "We've been pre-selected," she said quietly.

Fitz blinked and sat slowly back in shock, his mouth falling slightly open. This new information felt like too much to take in at once. Everything that had happened so far that evening had been like an emotional rollercoaster, each new event an even steeper drop into dread. Now, being told that he didn't have to worry about the future, that his safety and that of his mother was secure, he felt like he was suffering from extreme whiplash.

Jemma turned to look at him, her eyes wide, but anything she might have said was interrupted by her father, who stood suddenly and headed for the front door. Her mother watched him go, frowning. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"Back to the house," he said, as if it were obvious. "We've still got the land line. They could be calling us too." Then he pulled the door open and walked quickly outside, shutting it behind him.

As his mother quietly finished her phone call, Fitz looked at Jemma. She had twisted around to watch her father leave, but as she turned to look back at her mother, he saw tears in her eyes. His heart sank as realization set in. She had already done the math, just as he had, and she knew that their chances of making it into the Ark were next to nothing. She stood then, too, letting go of his hand and crossing to go take her father's place on the couch next to her mother, who put her arm around Jemma's shoulders, pulling her into her side.

Fitz had never felt so powerless in his life. The brief relief he'd felt at hearing he'd been pre-selected now burned acrid in his chest, poisoning his lungs. His vision tunneled in on Jemma, who was crying silently as her mother rubbed her shoulder. There was nothing he could do for her. Nothing at all. He struggled to swallow, his breathing turning shallow as an uncomfortable flush broke over him, and suddenly everything really was too much. The news anchors on the television were drumming incessant noise into his head, his skin was prickling, and the air felt too warm. His senses were thrown wide open, overwhelming him, and he couldn't stand it anymore.

Standing abruptly, he clenched his hands into fists before walking quickly to the staircase. He could feel his mother's eyes on him as he went, along with Jemma's and her mother's. "Leo?" his mother asked, concerned.

"Later, mum," was all he could manage as he grabbed hold of the banister and took the stairs two at a time. Once upstairs, he rushed down the hall and burst into his room, breathing heavily as he looked around at his furniture, all shrouded in darkness; then he went straight for the window, fumbling to get the latch undone and slide it open.

As soon as he had it high enough to be able to crawl out, he did, heedless of the cold winter air biting at his skin. He collapsed onto the roof below him, then pushed himself up to sit back against the wall of the house. After a moment, he tipped his head back against it and shut his eyes, forcing himself to breathe slowly through his nose, and drew his knees up to his chest. He was dimly aware that he was having a panic attack, and desperately wanted to pull himself back together; he didn't want anyone to see him so weak.

It took Fitz far longer than he wanted to admit to gain even a measure of control over his spiraling thoughts. He couldn't escape the comet outside, either; if he opened his eyes and looked up into the sky, he would see it there, small but distinct and getting closer with every passing second. He knew if he saw it now, he would have a breakdown.

He'd only just managed to calm the tingling in his hands and feet when he heard Jemma's voice in his bedroom. "Fitz?"

He sucked in a sharp breath and wrapped his arms tighter around his legs. He wasn't ready to face anyone yet.

A second later, light spilled out the window; she'd turned on his lamp. "Fitz?" she called again. Then, in his periphery, he saw her stick her head out the window. "There you are!" she said, and he heard a slight wobble in her voice. "Fitz, it's freezing! Come back inside before you catch your death of cold!"

It was only then that he realized he was shivering, hard. Ordinarily, he would have rolled his eyes at Jemma and told her she sounded like his mother before following her inside; now, he could only stiffly shake his head and mutter a harsh "no" in reply.

"Fitz!" Jemma cried, distressed, but he just shook his head again. She disappeared back inside then, only to reappear a moment later, pushing the comforter from his bed out of the window ahead of her. As soon as she was out on the roof, she gathered the comforter up in her arms and hurried over to him, then set about draping it over his shoulders, making sure it was snug around him. When she was satisfied, she dropped to sit cross-legged next to him, pulling the comforter around her shoulders as well, and pressed up close against his side. His shivers abated almost immediately, but he had the faint thought that he wasn't worth the trouble she'd gone to.

When he didn't speak after a long moment, he felt Jemma turn her head towards him. "Talk to me, Fitz," she urged quietly. "Please."

He took in a shuddering breath. Her presence beside him, warm and solid, should have comforted him, but instead it only reminded him that their lives had just been set on two very different paths. His meager hold on peace crumbled, and suddenly all he wanted to do was scream. Or cry. Or both.

"Well-everything's gone to shit now, hasn't it?" he ground out, pressing his forehead into his knees. "They're talking _contingency plans_. There's nothing they can really do to stop the comet. It's-it's _real_ now. It's not just some piece of rock out there in space, it's real and it's headed here and everything is just-just-" He cut himself off as a wave of dizziness and nausea crashed over him. "It's going to hit here and it's got my bloody _name_ on it."

"I know," Jemma murmured, placing a hand on his arm, and he thought she was trying to be reassuring, but her seemingly calm acceptance of everything just heightened his renewed panic.

"And that lottery bullshit, it's-why did they call us?" He curled even tighter into himself. "Why am I even on that list? I haven't done anything!"

"Fitz," Jemma said, but he couldn't stop the flood of words coming out of him, couldn't stop himself from throwing all of his fears, guilt, and insecurity at her feet.

"It was an accident!" he cried. "I wasn't even looking for it! It was just _there_ , and I saw it, and-I've done _nothing_ to deserve being on that list-"

Jemma's fingers clenched around his arm. "But you _did_ find it, and because of you we've had all this time to prepare," she said fiercely. "You've probably saved so many lives-"

He couldn't bear to hear that, because so many more people were going to die now. He cried out a low note of despair and started to lean away from her, but suddenly her arm was around his shoulders, refusing to let him go, pulling him into her, and her forehead was pressed against his temple.

"You deserve to be on the list," Jemma said firmly. "You do," she added when he shook his head again.

 _Not without you_ , he wanted to cry, but he couldn't. "You've done the math," he said instead, his voice rising in pitch. "Haven't you? I know you have, so you know that-that-and I can't-I don't-" His throat closed up on the words. He could barely think them, much less say them. Spots danced behind his eyelids, and the tingles prickling his skin were back; he felt in danger of passing out.

"Fitz." Jemma's voice was wobbling again, thick with emotion. "Breathe. Okay? Just breathe." He felt her fingers thread through his hair as one of her hands cradled his head against hers. "Slowly, with me. Breathe."

It took a long while again for his panic to subside, and for him to actually find comfort in Jemma, but eventually his dizziness began to dissipate, and it no longer felt like he had a vise around his lungs. She stayed beside him, murmuring encouragements in his ear and rubbing circles into his back. Finally, he was able to breathe easily, and his arms around his legs relaxed.

It was only then that he fully realized how tangled he and Jemma were. She was still crowding into his space, her arm tight around his shoulders and her breath warm on his cheek, and she was lightly stroking her fingers through his hair. He'd never been this close to her, not like this. The intimacy of it made his breath catch in his throat, and his heart swelled with a sudden, desperate hope.

He lifted his head slightly to turn to look at her; her fingers slipped from his hair to trail over his cheek with the movement before dropping off his jaw, as she looked up to meet his eyes. Then he was frozen, transfixed. Jemma's face was pale and luminous in the moonlight, her eyes lit by starshine, and she stared back at him like she was just as captivated as he was by her. It made the old, familiar longing for her tug at him. Without thinking, he felt himself start to sway toward her, as if he were being pulled by a magnet, his gaze dropping to her lips.

Then he remembered where he was, why he was there, and just how wrong and backward it all was. He forced himself to look away, taking in a shaky breath as shame curdled thick and heavy in his gut. "Christ," he mumbled. "This is-it's bollocks. _I'm_ the one on the bloody list and _you're_ having to make _me_ feel better." He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt another wave of panic threaten to build.

"No, Fitz-don't," Jemma said quickly, her voice hitching. "It's alright. I don't mind."

"I'm a mess," he shot back miserably. "Why do you even put up with me?"

He felt her fingertips on his cheek again, and after a pause she leaned in close. Not as close as she had been before-her forehead didn't touch his-but still close enough to feel her warmth. "You know why," she whispered.

Fitz's mouth twisted in the faintest of humorless smiles. "Best friends, yeah?"

There was a pause before she answered. "Yeah." Her voice hitched again as her hand dropped away. "Best friends."

He forced himself to look up at her again, and she sat back on her heels as he did. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked like she was trembling; guilt surged against the shame still lingering inside him as he realized that the cold must have gotten to her. He hung his head for a moment before moving to push himself to his feet, letting the comforter slide off his shoulders. "Come on," he sighed, holding a hand out to her. "Let's go back inside."

Jemma accepted his hand and he hauled her to her feet. He motioned for her to go through the window ahead of him as he gathered his comforter up into his arms. Once he was inside as well, Jemma shut and latched the window while he spread his comforter back over his bed.

"Your mum's worried," she said as he finished straightening it. "I know you probably don't feel like it, but maybe you should go talk to her for a few minutes."

She was right, but he still didn't think he was ready to be around other people. All he wanted to do was shut his door and hug Jemma for hours, blocking out the rest of the world and its problems. But he didn't want to worry his mother, either. It was likely that she might have some of the same reserves and guilt over being on the list as he did.

"I will," he promised. "Just-I think-I think I need another minute."

Jemma nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Okay. I'll be downstairs, then."

She moved to head for the door but Fitz, feeling another flash of panic, rushed to reach out and stop her. "No! Don't," he cried, then stopped short when she turned back to look at him with wide eyes. He dropped her hand like it had burned him. "I mean-just…don't. Please."

He was going to hate himself later for being so transparently needy and clingy, that much he knew, but at the moment he was too strung out emotionally to care. Thankfully, Jemma didn't seem to mind; after her initial surprise, she simply nodded and stepped in close to him.

"It'll be fine, Fitz," she said softly, reaching up to pluck at the sleeve of his shirt. "You'll see. Everything will be just fine."

He couldn't help but wonder if she actually believed herself, or if her words sounded just as hollow to her as they did to him.


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning at school, the halls were abuzz with talk about the failure of the _Messiah_ and the national lottery for the Ark. Even though he knew it wasn't true, Fitz felt like the eyes of all his fellow classmates were on him, as if they'd been able to divine his pre-selected status. It made for a very uncomfortable walk from the parking lot to his locker, and it only intensified once he got to class. No one was really able to focus on their schoolwork, not even the teachers, and most of his classes ended up digressing into discussions about the fairness of the lottery, where the _Messiah_ mission had gone wrong, and whether or not the Titan missiles would be able to destroy the comet. Fitz thanked every deity he could think of that everyone seemed too preoccupied with those topics to remember his involvement in everything, and no one asked for his thoughts on it.

After 2nd period Calculus let out, he and Jemma ran into Callie in the hall, who perked up when she saw them. "Hey!" she called, then leaned in and ducked her head so only they could hear her. "What do you think _happened_ last night? I feel so terrible for all the families, and…you know, everything else." She grimaced slightly. "I don't think it's really hit me yet."

Jemma glanced aside at him as they walked, but Fitz didn't say anything. He still felt guilty for falling apart on her the night before. "There's still time," she said, ever the optimist. "It's seven months away. I'm sure they'll figure something out."

"I wish I had your confidence," Callie muttered. "What do you guys think of the lottery? My parents said it's really the only fair way to decide who goes, but they think it's going to cause a lot of trouble. They don't like that some people got picked ahead of time."

Fitz kept his eyes trained on his shoes, feeling his chest start to constrict. Beside him, Jemma hummed thoughtfully. "I don't think there's anything they could have done that would make _everyone_ happy. They're in a difficult position."

"True. I wonder who they picked, though, and how they decided." Callie paused as a thought seemed to occur to her. Then she looked over at him. "Hey Fitz, what about you? I bet they picked you. I mean, you discovered the comet, they kinda _have_ to let you in, right?"

He felt his face drain of color. Glancing to the side, he noticed Jemma watching him carefully, searching for any sort of cue on how to react. Unfortunately, his hesitance said everything. Callie's eyes widened.

"Oh my god," she breathed. "You did! When did they call?"

"Not even five minutes after they announced it," he mumbled, clenching his arms tighter around his books.

Callie just blinked a few times, at a loss for words. "Wow," she finally said. "That's insane." Then she blanched. "I mean, just that they called that fast, not that they picked you-"

Fitz reached past Jemma to put a hand on Callie's arm, stopping all three of them in the middle of the hall. "Don't tell anyone, Callie," he begged, his heart racing. "Please. I, um-I don't want-"

She was already shaking her head, reaching up to give his forearm a brief squeeze. "No, I got it, I won't tell anyone," she replied, eyes still wide. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jemma's shoulders relax a little. He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the tension in his own chest lessen, and he managed a grateful smile.

"Thanks," he murmured, just as the warning bell rang for class. He looked around as their classmates began to filter out of the hall, then jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "We'd better go."

Callie nodded. "Yeah…I'll see you guys later, okay?" Giving them both a small smile, she turned and hurried off in the direction of her next class. Fitz looked up at Jemma then, who still looked a little apprehensive, and sighed.

"Everything will be fine," she said, sounding like an echo of herself from the night before.

Fitz repeated that to himself for the rest of the day, and by the time he dropped Jemma off at her house after school, he was almost starting to believe it. Then he saw Victoria Hand's car in the driveway as he neared his house, and his mood fell right back through the floor. She got out of her car as soon as he put his in park, and didn't even let him get fully out of it before she started talking.

"Where've you been?" she demanded, brandishing her cell phone. "I've been trying to get ahold of you for an hour."

He fought the urge to roll his eyes. It wasn't the first time Vic had forgotten he was still in high school. "I was at school, and then I was driving home," he replied, pulling his own phone from his pocket. Sure enough, he'd missed two calls and three text messages from her. "Let me guess: someone wants my opinion on everything that happened last night."

"Yep," Vic said. "And it's a big one. NBC Nightly News wants you to go on during their live broadcast tonight. I've already got everything set up with our local affiliate to get you streamed through." She grabbed the sleeve of his coat and started pulling him toward the front door of his house. "We've got a few hours, but we need to go ahead and get you ready."

Fitz let himself be led, taking the opportunity to fire off a text to both his mother and Jemma, informing them of the situation. "You know my mum still likes me to eat dinner at home before you drag me off somewhere, right?"

"We'll get you something to eat before we leave." She stood aside to let him get the door unlocked so they could go inside. "But first we've got to go over all the topics they're likely to cover and decide how we want you to answer."

Live appearances were, by far, his least favorite of the different varieties of interviews and speeches he'd had to give in the past several months. He disliked the unpredictability of some of the questions he was asked, hated feeling put on the spot, and coming up with an 'official' position on things felt like he was learning lines for a play. He vastly preferred the talks with journalists from magazines and newspapers, who were usually much better about putting him at ease. And it wasn't that he didn't like Vic-he knew she was just doing her job, and he was grateful to her for handling all of his media requests-he just didn't want to have to deal with any of it at all. He'd developed a keen appreciation for celebrities who jealously guarded their private lives.

They spent at least an hour going over general questions regarding the _Messiah_ mission and the national lottery; then Vic drilled him on his responses. After that, Fitz warmed up some leftovers for an early dinner (Vic declined, saying she had a protein bar in her purse) and when he was through eating, she raided his closet for interview attire she deemed acceptable ("Let's go with blue on blue this time; it really brings out your eyes."). When the clock struck 5, she started gathering her notes to stuff back into her tote.

"We need to get to the station soon," she said. "Is there anything else you need to do before we leave?"

Fitz was tapping out another text. "Jemma's going to be here in a minute. Is it okay if she comes?"

Vic frowned down at him as she shouldered her purse and tote. "I'm sure the crew at the station won't mind, but…do you really need her for this?"

He refused to be shamed. "Hey, someone else might have wanted, I don't know-" He shrugged. "Coconut water or a bag full of nothing but purple Skittles before every appearance. I just ask for Jemma. Or my mum."

She rolled her eyes, but there wasn't any real venom behind it. He heard the front door open, and a second later Jemma stood in the entry to the living room, bundled up in a coat and scarf. "Hello, Vic," she said, then looked at Fitz. "I'm ready to go if you are."

Vic drove them to the station. Fitz sat up front, talking with her about the other media requests that had come in overnight, while Jemma kept busy on her phone. Once they arrived, he was whisked off by the news producer and one of the anchors to get prepped for the livestream. It wasn't unusual for him to get pulled away from Jemma or his mother and not get a chance to speak to them again until he was through, especially with television appearances, but it always put him a little more at ease just knowing they were there. Time passed quickly, and before he knew it, the local news was over and they were getting ready for the national NBC news program. Fitz was directed to sit in a chair on the news set, and a crew member clipped a mic to his shirt while another positioned one of their cameras in front of him.

The cameraman checked to ensure the video link was working on both ends; then the producer did a silent five-second countdown to the link going live. A small monitor set up next to the camera showed what was happening in the main studio in New York; Fitz kept an eye on it and gave a small smile and nod of greeting when he was introduced as being one of the commentators appearing later on the show. Then the anchor launched into their main segment on the failure of the _Messiah_ mission, the death of Officer Partenza, and the unknown status of the rest of the crew.

Fitz spent that time working on keeping calm, breathing slowly to keep his nervousness in check. He was glad he wasn't the only person they'd brought on for the broadcast; the other commentators consisted of actual scientists, engineers, and government officials. While he knew he had the ability to keep up with them in conversation, he still lacked their practical experience and detailed knowledge of the mission, and he wasn't sure how much he would even be able to add to the discussion.

When the broadcast finally got to the live panel segment, he sat up straight and lifted his chin a bit, remembering Vic's coaching on proper posture. He let the other commentators carry the weight of the conversation, nodding in all the right places, and only spoke when he was asked a direct question. As the hour began to draw to a close, Fitz mentally breathed a sigh of relief. Everything had gone rather well for a live appearance, he thought, and he was looking forward to getting home and putting it all behind him.

On the monitor, the anchor in New York tapped his pen against his desk. "Now, one last question, for Mr. Fitz-in the interest of transparency, the Beck administration has made available to the public a list of all the individuals who were pre-selected for a spot in the Ark. We've learned that your name is included on that list. Do you have any comments on that?"

Fitz felt his blood freeze in his veins as a cold terror washed over him. This wasn't supposed to happen-no one was supposed to know-this _wasn't_ a question he'd been prepped for, and it couldn't have come at a worse time. He took in a slow breath, painfully aware of the fact that he was live on national television, and tried to swallow down the panic swelling back up within him. "I, uh-"

His eyes flitted off to the side of the camera. He couldn't see anything past the brightness of the studio lights, but he knew Jemma was back there somewhere, with Vic (who was surely grinding her teeth in fury at the news anchor). He would have given anything to be able to see either of them just then, even Vic. She would have known exactly what he should say.

"Um." He cleared his throat and looked back into the camera, trying not to feel sick. "I'm-honored that they chose me."

On the monitor, the anchor nodded. "Thank you, Mr. Fitz, and also to the rest of you for agreeing to come on tonight. Now, looking forward to tomorrow night on NBC Nightly News…"

The live video links to Fitz and the rest of the commentators closed out on the monitor, and he deflated a little in his seat as one of the tech assistants came forward to get him unhooked from his mic. As soon as he was able, Fitz stepped down from the stage, blinking into the relative darkness of the rest of the studio. It only took him a second to locate Jemma. She was standing near the back of the room, twisting her hands together in front of her and looking like she was holding herself back from running toward him. Next to her, Vic tapped rapidly at her phone, scowling.

"I'm trying to figure out where that damn list came from," she said as soon as he was within earshot. "I haven't heard anything about the list going public; it must have been right before the broadcast."

While Vic continued scrolling through her phone, muttering to herself, Jemma simply looked at him, her eyes asking the question she didn't have to put words to. He gave her a tight, humorless smile in answer and crossed his arms. Frowning, she nodded once before reaching out to lay her hand on his forearm.

"Got it," Vic announced. "Here it is, Department of Homeland Security's website. It's only been up for about two hours." She gave an angry sigh as she slipped her phone back into her purse. "I don't blame them for asking, not really, because technically it was a scoop...but it was a little dirty, springing that on you."

Fitz pressed the knuckles of one hand against the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I know I probably didn't-"

Vic held up a hand to stop him. "No, Fitz, you did great. You answered that about as perfectly as you could have, whether you meant it or not." He looked away, and she squinted at him. "Did you?"

He nodded, still not fully confident in his ability to speak. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. I meant it. It's just…"

Jemma gently squeezed his forearm before letting her hand fall away, and he saw her look up at Vic. She didn't speak, but apparently some sort of understanding passed between them, because Vic sighed again before stooping to pick up her tote. "Let's get you two home," she said. "Fitz, we'll sort out the rest of the media requests tomorrow."

When Fitz and Jemma came through the front door of his house after Vic dropped them off, his mother immediately stood from where she'd been seated on the couch.

"Leo!" she exclaimed, moving toward him with open arms. "I watched the news. Are you okay? You looked so upset at the end."

Fitz didn't shy away from his mother's embrace, though he did hang his head, shoulders slumping, as she hugged him tightly. "Was I that bad?" he groaned. "Vic said I wasn't that bad."

His mother gave him one last squeeze before pulling away and patting his arms. "No, love, you weren't. I could tell because I know you. I hate that you were put on the spot like that."

He shrugged miserably, stepping away to take off his coat. "I didn't really want anyone to know, but-oh well. _That_ cat's out of the bag now."

"Maybe I can do something to help cheer you up a bit," Mrs. Fitz said, beckoning both him and Jemma towards the kitchen. "Jemma dear, do you have enough time to stay for a bit of hot chocolate?"

Fitz glanced back at her as he headed for the kitchen; she was smiling, shedding her coat as well. "I do," she said, following them. "I don't have any homework tonight."

Mrs. Fitz was already pulling two mugs and a jar of cocoa powder out of the cabinet. "Give me just a few minutes and I'll have the both of you set."

Fitz dropped into his usual seat at the kitchen table, blowing out a breath and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Can I just pretend the last twenty-four hours didn't happen?"

His mother frowned as she took some milk out of the refrigerator. "I think you know that's not the healthiest thing to do, love."

"I know," he muttered. "I know. Doesn't mean I still can't wish for it."

He heard the scrape of a chair against the floor next to him, followed by the soft press of Jemma's fingers at the crook of his elbow. "If you're worried about tomorrow, don't be," she said. "No one will judge you. It's not like you _asked_ to be pre-selected."

He turned his head just enough to give her a skeptical look. "You really believe that?"

Jemma's expression was calm and steady. "I hope for it. Anyway, if anyone _does_ judge you, they're not worth your time."

Fitz sighed and leaned his forehead back against his palms. "Easy for you to say. You're not the one who's been under a microscope for months now."

She pulled her hand away from him, looking mildly reproachful. "Fitz, I'm just trying to help."

"I know," he repeated. And he did know. She didn't deserve his grouchiness. He tried his best to give her something approaching a smile, but it fell flat. The microwave beeped then, and he looked up to see his mother pull two steaming mugs from it.

"Try not to think about it for a little bit, Leo," she said, setting them down before picking up a can of whipped cream. "You'll just be miserable for the rest of the night." Smiling at him, she added a generous dollop of cream to each mug. Jemma's eyes lit up when she set them down in front of them.

"You know what this means, right Fitz?" she asked, rotating the mug so she could pick it up. When he simply raised an eyebrow at her, she took a quick sip of her hot chocolate-but when she pulled away, there was a bit of whipped cream left on the tip of her nose.

Fitz barked out a laugh. It was genuine, unexpected but wholly welcome. Clearly pleased with herself, Jemma beamed at him. "Go on, then," she said, gesturing at his mug. "Your turn."

"You are such a child, Jemma," he mumbled, but he was smiling too, and this time it didn't feel forced. Lifting his mug, he took a careful sip-he didn't want to burn himself-and made a contented noise as the sweetness of the chocolate registered on his tongue. Then, aware Jemma was watching him, he gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes and tipped his nose forward into the whipped cream.

When he set his mug back down, Jemma broke out into a fit of giggles. "You look ridiculous," she laughed. Behind her, his mother smiled at the both of them before leaving to go back into the living room, giving his shoulder a quick squeeze as she passed by.

"And you don't?" Fitz asked, before trying in vain to lick the cream off his own nose. It only made Jemma laugh harder.

"All part of my plan to keep your mind where it should be," she said, reaching for a napkin to wipe her face with.

He gave up and grabbed a napkin for himself. "And that is…?"

She smiled at him. "Happy. Or, at least, not worried."

Fitz felt a rush of warmth go through him at her smile that had nothing to do with the hot chocolate. Not for the first time, he marvelled at the wonder that was Jemma Simmons and her boundless optimism. How she could be laughing and smiling in spite of everything they now faced, he didn't know, but for the moment he didn't want to argue. He wanted to cling to it and believe the lie that everything would be fine, that they weren't destined to be separated in only a few months' time.

But he couldn't quite bring himself to.

-:-

When Fitz and Jemma arrived at school in the morning, he _knew_ it wasn't just his imagination. As they made their way inside, everyone turned to look at him as he passed. Their expressions ranged from curious to dispassionate to downright disgusted. Palpably aware of the latter, Fitz shuffled closer to Jemma and kept his head down.

Callie stood waiting for them at their lockers, her eyes wide and anxious. "I didn't tell them," she said, twisting her hands together as they drew close. "It wasn't me."

Jemma gave her a soft, reassuring smile. "We know. Don't worry."

Fitz spun the combination dial on his locker and ducked behind the door once he got it open. "I guess everyone watched the news last night. See? I knew this would happen."

Callie only looked even more wretched, but Jemma shook her head. "Nothing's happened, Fitz," she said. "They're just-people stare. It's human nature."

He scowled. "Yeah, well, human nature can go hang. You see their faces, yeah? Some of them looked at me like I pissed in their corn flakes."

Jemma sighed and shut her locker. "It's still not your fault. You have to remember that. Come on, let's get to class."

She turned to leave, and both Fitz and Callie made to follow her. However, they didn't get more than a few steps down the hall before someone shoved Fitz from behind, hard. He yelped, his books and binders scattering across the floor as he tried not to fall on his face; beside him, Callie whipped around sharply to look for the perpetrator, but they had already disappeared back into the crowd of students.

A burst of snorts and snickers rippled across the people closest to them; someone said "nice" just a little too loudly. Jemma instantly dropped down to start gathering his things, but Fitz remained standing, briefly shutting his eyes. "Really?" he demanded quietly, feeling anger and embarrassment roll through him. "Are we really back in bloody primary school?"

"I didn't see who did it." Callie's demeanor had swiftly switched from upset to tense and alert. "What a jerk."

"Doesn't really matter." Feeling everyone's eyes on them, Fitz knelt down to pick up what Jemma hadn't reached. "Thanks," he said, quieter. He could feel her trying to catch his gaze, but he wouldn't look at her. She handed him his books and then they both stood up. When they started walking again, both Callie and Jemma moved so that they flanked him, forming a barrier between him and anyone else who might want to attack him from the side.

Unfortunately, the day only went downhill from there. Jemma's presence was a small comfort against the judgmental stares he received all morning, but they didn't have every class together. By the time the bell rang, signaling the end of 4th period gym, Fitz had had enough basketballs thrown at his head to last a lifetime. One boy had even been bold enough to approach him directly and ask what sort of favors he'd called in to get placed on the pre-selected list. Fitz was so worn down by it all, by the thinly-veiled derision he could practically feel coming off his classmates in waves, that he decided to skip lunch and hide.

Ducking into a lesser-used restroom, he made straight for the last stall and shut himself inside, sinking down onto the toilet with his head in his hands. He never thought he would miss the constant selfie requests and people suddenly acting like they were friends, but he found that he would take it in a heartbeat over his current treatment. It was far too reminiscent of what he'd had to endure at school back in Scotland.

Eyes squeezed shut, breath shaky as he tried to calm himself, Fitz wasn't aware of how much time had passed before he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Blinking back the tears that were threatening, he pulled it out and wasn't surprised to see that it was a text from Jemma.

 _[Jemma] where are you?_

He swallowed, swiping his free hand across his eyes. Of course Jemma had missed him at lunch. He'd been so caught up in his own misery that he'd completely forgotten about her. He debated for a moment on whether or not he should lie, but knew that she would see right through it.

 _[Fitz] hiding in the men's next to the chem lab_

Her next text came quickly.

 _[Jemma] was gym really that awful?_

He didn't reply. He didn't feel like he could. Jemma knew he hadn't had a good time of it before he'd moved to America, but he'd never gone into the messy details, not really. He didn't want to draw the comparison between then and the pervasive foul attitude he was getting today; honestly, he just wanted to be left alone to lick his wounds in peace. He'd gotten by alone before.

Fitz didn't think Jemma would let his silence lie, but he didn't expect to hear her voice when the restroom door creaked open a few minutes later, her hushed whisper loud in the silence of the room. "Fitz?"

"Jemma!" He shot up off the toilet. "What are you doing in here?! You-no, go away!"

She ignored him, her voice coming closer. "Which one are you in?"

Fumbling to get the latch undone, Fitz opened the stall door just long enough to reach out and pull her in with him. It was cramped with both of them in there, and belatedly he realized that they would still be in trouble if someone else came in-two sets of feet facing each other in a tiny bathroom stall would look very suspect. She couldn't stay long. Foregoing any niceties, he hissed, "What do you want?"

Jemma didn't look the least bit fazed by his rudeness. "I was worried. You must be feeling really bad if you were willing to miss lunch." She smiled weakly at him.

He looked away; the weight of her sad stare felt almost oppressive in the confines of the stall. "It's...don't worry about it. I'll be fine. People-" He huffed out a breath. "It's not anything I'm not used to."

She sighed quietly. "You don't have to pretend to be all macho around me, you know."

He kept his eyes on his feet. "I'm not being macho, Jemma."

She went quiet for a moment. When he glanced up her at her, she was chewing her lip in thought. Just before he asked what she was thinking about, she took in a deep breath. "Maybe...maybe we should just go home," she said.

Fitz's eyes widened. "What? Are you serious?"

After a short pause, she nodded once, firmly, as if she'd just made up her mind. "Yes."

He could hardly believe his ears. She wanted them to skip school? "Who are you and what have you done with Jemma Simmons?"

Jemma laughed softly, shrugging as her cheeks flushed. "There's only two periods left in the day, and we're both well ahead of the curriculum. I doubt we'll be missed. Anyway, I'm sure they have much bigger things on their mind. Let's just get you home, and then we can decide what to do from there."

Fitz thought it over for a moment. His instinct was to stay because he had a sterling attendance record, but he wouldn't deny that what he wanted most was to go home, crawl into bed, and pull his pillow over his head. Finally, he nodded. "Okay. Let's-let's go home." He moved to unlatch the stall door again. "But let me go first, yeah? I don't want us getting caught together in here."

Once he made sure the coast was clear, Fitz motioned for Jemma to follow him out of the restroom. They hurried through the halls to their lockers, heads down and silent. After they retrieved their backpacks, they walked as fast as they could outside to the parking lot. Fitz didn't relax until his car was within sight.

They didn't speak much on the ride home, both feeling a little guilty about skipping school despite themselves, but when they neared the turn onto Jemma's street, she looked across at him. "Do you want me to come over? Or-would you rather be alone?"

Fitz flexed his fingers over the steering wheel. "Honestly?" He'd wanted to be alone before, but he knew it wasn't what was best for him. "D'you...do you mind staying? It's just, if I'm by myself I'll probably just sit there and-you know how I can be. You can quiz me for our Calculus test next week."

Jemma smiled, looking relieved. "That I can do."

When they got to his house, Fitz made good on his wish to drop onto his bed, but he didn't slip beneath the covers. Jemma sat on the floor with her back against the bed frame near the pillow, her Calculus textbook open in her lap, and started calling out equations for him to solve. He threw an arm across his eyes and shut them, trying to blot out everything but the sound of Jemma's voice and the numbers spinning through his head. If he concentrated on that, maybe he could forget about the rest of the world, at least for a little while.


	8. Chapter 8

Fitz's situation at school only got worse. Every day, he dealt with jeers, shoves, and nasty looks in the halls and in the classroom. Gym became so unbearable that he started skipping it every day, opting instead to go sit in his car and reread every book he had on his shelves at home. He never got in trouble for it; the school administrators had other things on their mind than a kid who wasn't meeting his physical education requirements. When the bell rang for lunch, Jemma would come out to join him and they would eat together while she updated him on what she was learning in Psychology. Callie joined them occasionally at first, but eventually she ate with them every day.

"You know...you don't have to, uh-don't feel like you have to ditch your friends just for me," Fitz said one afternoon in March, turning so he could look at her where she sat in the back of his car, her lunch spread out across the empty seat beside her. "I know it's not exactly winning you cool points, coming out here."

She gestured vaguely with the hand that was holding her chicken wrap while she swallowed. "Like I care about cool points," she said, before taking a sip of her water. "Or like they even matter now."

Fitz shrugged "I, er...I thought you did, once." He shifted to face forward again. "No offense."

"None taken," she replied easily. "And you're right, I probably did. But like I said, that stuff doesn't matter anymore. Everyone else here is kind of an asshole. You should hear what I've heard people say when you're not around."

He sighed, looking down at his can of soda. "I'm good, thanks."

Jemma, who was sitting sideways in the passenger seat with her back against the door, smiled. "We're glad that you eat with us, Callie," she said. "Really. It keeps us out of our own heads."

"God, I can only imagine what _that's_ like," Callie teased, but Fitz could hear the answering smile in her voice.

"Everyone hates me because of the lottery, and everyone automatically hates Jemma because they associate her with me," he said. "Now they'll hate you too."

"Eh. It's not so bad. We're like...the Three Amigos now, or something."

Jemma's smile widened. "The Three Amigos. Right. I like it." Then she looked pointedly at Fitz, silently asking his opinion.

He ducked his head again, feeling oddly touched. He wasn't used to anyone but Jemma vouching for him. It was nice knowing that someone else was bothering to give him a chance. "It's...yeah. It's good," he said quietly, turning his head to give Callie a small smile.

Jemma beamed before turning her attention back to her salad.

As the weeks wore on and the comet's imminent arrival drew ever closer, it became impossible to ignore the way society slowly began to fray at the edges. Small businesses began to close their doors. Some stores started to raise prices on essential items like water and non-perishable food, despite the price freeze the President had enacted months before; there simply wasn't enough law enforcement available to ensure everyone complied. The zoo closed down, too, along with the museum, the library, and several other public facilities. With no new movies to release, the theaters were forced to shut their doors as well. Military vehicles became a commonplace sight on the roads.

One by one, their fellow students stopped showing up for school-either because they had left for someplace else, looking for a way to ride out the storm, or because their parents told them they didn't have to go. Their classes began to lose focus. No one, not even their teachers, saw the point in sticking to the curriculum when the comet would hit before the next school year could even start. Instead of spending their days learning, class devolved into discussions of how everyone was preparing for the coming crisis, where they thought the comet would likely hit, how bad the damage would be, and how quickly everything would fall into chaos afterward.

Fitz always felt very aware of the accusing stares he would get during those discussions, knowing his classmates were thinking of how he'd be safely tucked away in the Ark with very little to worry about-or so they presumed. He _was_ worried, _would_ worry. Because Jemma always took part in those discussions, knowing she too would likely be facing the end along with the rest of them. She didn't have a place next to him at the Ark.

It was something he tried very, very hard not to think about, but it wasn't easy.

The senior class at Lee High School graduated in late May with very little fanfare. On the last day of school, Callie walked with them out to the parking lot, hesitating when they reached Fitz's car.

"Well," she said, tugging at the straps of her backpack, "I guess this is it."

Fitz glanced at Jemma. Her hands were folded in front of her, her eyes downcast. "It is." She swallowed before looking up. "You're leaving next week, right?"

Callie nodded. "Yeah. My mom's cousin has that ranch in Montana that I told you about...she said he just finished putting in an underground shelter that we can stay in."

"Do you think it will work?" Fitz knew Jemma wasn't asking about the structural integrity the shelter so much as the longevity of it. But Callie just shrugged.

"I don't know," she said. "But we think it's better to have some kind of plan in place rather than no plan at all." Both Jemma and Fitz nodded at that, and she smiled faintly while toeing at a crack in the pavement. "What about you, Jemma? Any big plans?"

Jemma shook her head, her lips pressing down into a thin line. "Without knowing where it's going to hit, my parents don't really see the point in going anywhere else. We're just...going to do the best we can."

It was Callie's turn to nod; then she looked at Fitz. "And you?" she asked unnecessarily.

"I'm set, aren't I?" he said quietly, bitterly.

Callie watched him for a moment before sighing and looking between him and Jemma. "Well, you guys take care of each other, okay? I want to say good luck, but that-it doesn't sound right, or like it's enough. But you know what I mean?" When Jemma nodded, Callie stepped forward to pull her into a hug. Jemma looked a little surprised, but she didn't hesitate in hugging the other girl back. Callie gave her one long, tight squeeze before pulling back and turning to Fitz with a falsely bright smile on her face. She made as if she wanted to shake his hand, or maybe fist-bump him, but then she said, "oh, screw it," and stretched to throw her arms around his neck.

Fitz tensed, startled, but when she didn't let go, he forced himself to relax and fold his arms around her in turn. He was a little shocked to realize that he would sincerely miss Callie; she'd never been anything but nice to him, even before he'd become famous, and once the rest of their classmates turned against him, she'd been a staunch ally. He'd needed that, needed her alongside Jemma, and he'd probably never thanked her for it. Closing his eyes, he pulled her a little closer and tried to tell her with his arms what he didn't think he could get out in words.

When Callie finally pulled back, he opened his eyes to see Jemma watching them with a bit of an odd look on her face, one that looked almost unbearably sad. He caught her eyes, and she blinked, her expression schooling back into something much more composed.

"So-don't be strangers," Callie said, nudging Fitz with her elbow. It was an attempt at levity that almost worked. "When this all blows over, you know, if you two are around...get in touch."

 _If you two are around. If you two aren't dead._

"We will," Jemma said, coming to stand closer to Fitz. His heart clenched at her use of the word _we_. "Be safe, Callie."

Callie smiled again, nodding, and started backing away. "Yeah. I will. Bye, you guys."

Then she turned and started walking quickly in the direction of her own car. Fitz watched her go, letting out a long sigh. When he looked over at Jemma, she was already watching him. He didn't need to say his thoughts aloud: she also knew it was likely the last time they would ever see Callie.

"Come on," Jemma murmured, brushing her hand against his. "Let's go home."

Swallowing down the sudden lump in his throat, Fitz nodded and moved to unlock his car door. He couldn't help but fixate on how Jemma had said _home_ as if it were a place they went together, somewhere they would always go together.

But he knew, back behind the part of his brain labeled _denial_ , that it wouldn't always be true. Everything, including them, was slowly coming to an end, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

-:-

It wasn't long after school let out that Fitz realized a change was coming over Jemma.

She was withdrawing into herself. Where once she had chattered almost incessantly to fill up any silence she found, she became quiet and contemplative. Several times, he found her staring off into the middle of space with a blank expression, and when he gently prodded her to get her attention, she'd startle. She would smile it away, or laugh and ask what he needed, but she couldn't fool him. He knew she was thinking of the comet and the bleak outlook for her own future. What he wondered, though, was if her worries extended to him.

Was she as preoccupied with the thought of losing him as he was with her? Did it fill her chest with an aching sadness that no amount of time spent together could erase?

At first, he was afraid that her growing silence meant she was pulling away from him, and he had to fight himself not to cling harder. But he needn't have worried. Jemma still spent just as much time at his house as he did hers; she just didn't speak much. He didn't either; he didn't know what to say, what he _could_ say that wouldn't sound trite and patronize her very real concerns. Instead, they gravitated closer physically to close up the space that their words left behind. They started sitting as close as possible, shoulder to shoulder and thigh pressed to thigh, and if Jemma was lounging on the bed, she always had a hand or elbow leaning on his shoulder. They spent their days in front of the television watching news reports of escalating tensions across all the major U.S. cities, of clashes between neighbors and the rampant looting of businesses. It became safer to stay at home, and Fitz had never been more grateful that Jemma only lived one street away. Their neighborhood was still safe, and it was easy for them to walk back and forth between their houses, or drive if they felt it was necessary.

When Jemma did speak, it was mostly about what she imagined life in the Ark might be like. She tried to keep him engaged by theorizing about all the science he would have access to there, what with all the technology and plant and animal life the Ark would be harboring, but he could never drum up much enthusiasm. All of the science and technology in the world didn't mean a thing to him if he couldn't experience it with her.

One warm evening in mid-June, they were sitting out on the roof outside his bedroom, staring up at the sky. The comet was plainly visible now, a bright fuzzy smear against a backdrop of stars. As had become their new custom, they weren't speaking much, mostly content to sit with one another in silence. After awhile, he heard Jemma sigh.

"I can't imagine my life without you."

Fitz looked askance at her in surprise, both because she'd spoken and because it was the first time she'd ever mentioned _them_. She was looking down at her hands between her knees, and the lights shining from inside the house had lit a halo around her hair, picking out stray strands like spun gold. He wanted to memorize her as she was right in that moment, to take a snapshot of her in his mind and file it away for when she was no longer there beside him.

"I know, it's silly," Jemma added, a bit self-deprecatingly. "Because we're just friends, but…I really can't. You're the best friend I've ever had."

He swallowed, feeling his heart twist. "Yeah, no, I get it. It's the same for me."

She looked up at him then, and her eyes were sad. "I'll miss you," she said quietly.

His heart twisted again, even more painfully. As much as he tried not to think about it, it seemed to be all he _could_ think about lately: that their time was running out, that in a few weeks he was going to have to leave her behind for the safety of the Ark, while she and everyone else was left to fend for themselves, to try and escape the comet and the death of life as they knew it. He spent every minute apart from Jemma wishing that they were together, and every minute he spent with her, he wanted to pull her close and never, ever let go. It tore him apart and kept him awake at night, knowing that very soon he would be saying what would likely be their last goodbye.

Looking at Jemma, seeing her look back at him with eyes filled with moonlight, tugged at his heart and lowered some of the walls he'd built to guard it. Shifting to lean his weight back on one arm, he smiled wanly at her and held his other arm out in silent invitation. She took it immediately, scooting over until she was curled into his side, leaning her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her, adjusting slightly until they were both comfortable, then rested his cheek on top of her hair.

They'd only been close like this once before, the night the lottery had been announced and he'd had a breakdown. Thankfully, the intimacy of it still didn't feel awkward or forced. It felt...right. Natural. Perfect, even more than it had before. After a long moment where he stared quietly up at the sky, he murmured, "You never know. It might work out. Your parents could still get a phone call. Or your number will come up in the lottery."

Jemma sighed against him. "Oh, Fitz…you know if we were on the list, they would have called by now. And you know the odds on the lottery."

He closed his eyes as the urge to wrap both his arms around her and cry washed over him. "I know." Of course he did. "I just-I can't think about it. I don't _want_ to."

She leaned into him even more, then gently laid her hand on his knee. "Then don't. Don't waste the time we have left. We'll spend as much time as we can together and then…we'll deal with the rest when it happens. Right?"

He felt the sting of tears. "Yeah. Like we always do."

Jemma nodded. "Together," she whispered.

 _Don't waste the time we have left._

Fitz's walls were threatening to crumble. He almost told her everything then, nearly opened his heart to her and spoke all the words he'd hidden from her for nearly three years. But he didn't, because he'd always been a coward when it came to things that mattered, and he didn't want to spend their last days together estranged by the awkwardness of an ill-timed confession.

"We'll figure something out," he said after awhile, more to himself than anything else. "We always do."

Jemma's answering silence spoke volumes, and he wondered when exactly it was that she'd lost her faith. It drove home the awareness that this time, they wouldn't figure it out. The likelihood of her family being selected in the lottery was slim to none. Her days were numbered, and he would have to go on without her. He didn't think he could do it, but there was no way they could stop the end of the world. So Fitz closed his eyes again, tears still pricking, breathed slowly out, and committed to memory the feeling of Jemma close and warm next to him. He memorized the softness of her hair beneath his cheek, the faint scent of lavender that he'd always associated with her, the light pressure of her hand on his knee. He memorized the way she fit perfectly against him, how her head settled into the crook of his neck, the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

They stayed that way for a long time, silent and still save for his thumb rubbing circles into her shoulder, until his mother stuck her head out of the window to remind them of how late the hour had grown. And if Jemma noticed his red-rimmed eyes when she pulled away to stand up, she didn't say anything about it.


	9. Chapter 9

The solution, when it came to him a week later, was so startlingly obvious in its simplicity that Fitz couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it sooner.

Well, that was a lie. He hadn't thought of it because it was absolutely insane, and he was nearly positive that Jemma wouldn't agree to go along with it. But the seed of hope had been planted, and once it sprang to life in his mind, he couldn't let it go. He had to see if it was possible for him to save both Jemma _and_ her parents.

He did his research on his own, not wanting to let anyone else in on it until he had confirmation that it would work. He read everything he could on the government's website regarding all the public details of the rules and stipulations for the Ark lottery and who was eligible to go, regardless of whether or not they had been pre-selected or chosen in the lottery. Then he put in a few calls to the local Civil Defense office, often being put on hold for several minutes at a time while the information he sought was tracked down. He had to do a fair amount of sweet-talking to ensure that all his demands were met, but in the end, the answer came back loud and clear: it was possible. His idea would be allowed.

Fitz spent several minutes pacing his room after hanging up, clutching his phone to his chest, his head filled with white noise and a giddiness that left him dizzy and shaking. It would work. He could save Jemma; they wouldn't have to be separated, and her parents would be safe, too. It sounded too good to be true, but it was _real_. Civil Defense had already emailed him an addendum to the list of documents he'd need to provide to the authorities on the scheduled night of the evacuation, and it had only one simple addition. Just one.

Thinking of that one additional piece of paper sent a flood of terror through him. He was definitely right in thinking his plan was crazy, and he still wasn't sure Jemma would agree, but he had to try. He could be brave enough for that, at least.

Taking a deep breath, he shoved his phone in his pocket and opened the door to his room. It was time to let his mother in on the plan-her approval was vital to it working. He would need the approval of Jemma's parents too, but that would come later. If his mum didn't agree, the whole thing was dead in the water. _One step at a time._

He edged cautiously down the stairs, sighting his mother sitting on the living room couch, watching the news. He swallowed. "Mum?"

-:-

Not only did his mother agree, she cried when he finished explaining everything. He'd stared in horror, unsure of what to do, but she'd accepted the tissue he'd handed her before wrapping him up in a hug. She'd said she was _proud_ of him.

That left him feeling profoundly uncomfortable-was he really doing something _brave_?-so he'd politely shrugged off another hug and made her promise not to say anything to either Jemma or her parents before he could do so himself.

Then he locked himself in the garage for a few hours, armed with a few unused washer rings, a tapered metal pipe, a hammer, and a blowtorch, and got to work tinkering. A jewelry shop, if there were even any left open, would have been far beyond his meager price range. This way felt more personal, more practical, better suited to them, and it gave him something technical to focus on for awhile that didn't cause his stomach to churn with nerves.

When he was done shaping and sizing the two small rings, he coated them with a sealant before grabbing some polish and buffing them to a shine. Then he set them both down on his workbench and studied them. They weren't perfect-they were darker than traditional rings tended to be, and the hammering was slightly uneven on the sides-but they would do just fine.

All that was left to do was ask Jemma the most important question of his life.

-:-

It took him another solid week to get up the courage to do it.

He decided to walk to Jemma's house instead of driving the short distance, using the time to rehearse the speech he'd prepared in his head. Their neighborhood was the busiest he'd seen in awhile; he supposed that with only four weeks left, some people were choosing to leave on their own ahead of time. As a National Guard truck full of soldiers rumbled past him, he saw that the family that lived across the street from Jemma was loading up their car with luggage and boxes. Another neighbor was adding a few trash bags to the large pile collecting at the curb; garbage pickup hadn't been running for at least two weeks, and the amount of waste being left to molder in the summer heat was beginning to be a problem. Well, Fitz mused, it wouldn't be a problem for much longer.

As he crossed the Simmons' front yard, he saw Jemma's father coming out of the garage carrying a set of window bars. "Leo!" he called. "Just the person I wanted to see. Could you give me a hand with these?"

Fitz grimaced slightly. "Uh-yeah, sure, yes sir," he said, following him over to one of the front windows of the house.

"I just need you to help hold it steady while I get the screws in," Mr. Simmons explained, hefting the bars up and positioning them over the window. "Got it?"

Fitz bent to get his shoulder braced under one side of the bars while reaching over to hold the other side with his hands. "Yeah, I'm good."

Mr. Simmons smiled as he picked up his power drill. "Good. Okay, steady now…"

The bars jostled a bit as he started drilling the first screw in, and Fitz bit his lip as he adjusted his hold on the bars in order to keep them steady. He thought the protective measure was more than a bit futile, as he figured people had better things to do in their last days than loot houses (businesses were another matter entirely), but he didn't dare mention that to Mr. Simmons. Instead, he looked over and saw Jemma's mother sitting nearby on the front porch, listening to the news on a wireless radio. She smiled sympathetically at him, and as soon as they'd gotten the last screw into the bars, she said, "Jemma's out in the back garden."

Fitz smiled back as he brushed his hands off on his jeans. "Thanks," he said gratefully. Sparing a glance at Mr. Simmons, he hurried to go through the house and into the backyard.

He found Jemma lying on her back on the garden swing, staring up through the leaves of the maple tree that shaded it. She looked up as she heard him approaching, and moved to sit up with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Hey," he said. "I texted you this morning, but I never heard back. Is everything alright?"

She gave him a look that was only mildly reproachful-no, things were _not_ alright-before shrugging apologetically. "I haven't had my phone on me much today. I'm sorry. I've been…thinking, I suppose."

"About what?" he asked.

Jemma shifted to one side of the swing and patted the empty space next to her. As he sat down, she scrunched her nose up thoughtfully. "I heard on the radio that there were more riots and looting on the other side of town last night," she said. "And I just…I don't know. I guess it put me in a mood. Everything's ending and…" She sighed. "There are people out there more concerned with causing problems and getting material things, when maybe they should be focusing on what really matters. The people they love. That sort of thing."

Fitz paled a little. "Yeah," he managed, thinking of the rings currently burning a hole in his pocket. Then he swallowed and breathed out. He might as well just go for it; he wasn't going to get any more or less brave just sitting there. "Jemma," he said, shifting to angle himself toward her on the swing, "I-I've been doing some thinking, too."

Her eyebrows went up in interest as she turned to face him as well. Looking into her eyes, Fitz's carefully-prepared speech evaporated like so much mist under the sun, and all he could do was stare at her dumbly. After a moment, she tilted her head and furrowed her brow slightly. "Fitz?"

Panicking slightly, he reached into his pocket for the rings, then silently held them out to her in his palm. It was completely inelegant and even a bit crass, and not at all how he'd wanted it to go, but hopefully it would get the point across. Judging by the way Jemma's eyes went wide as she looked at them, her mouth falling slightly open, it did.

She glanced quickly up at him before returning her gaze to the rings. "Fitz, are those-?" she breathed.

"I talked to Civil Defense," he said in a rush, finally finding his voice (hoarse though it was). "They said if you and I, um, if we got married, we'd be considered family. And you could come to the Ark with me."

His entire life felt like it hinged upon Jemma's eyes, or her face or whatever she chose to say next. She continued to stare at the rings for a long moment, and he could tell her breathing had gone shallow. Just before her silence stretched out long enough that he started to feel like a fool, holding two shabby, handmade rings out to her, she swallowed thickly and looked up at him. He didn't think she'd ever looked so stunned, or so serious.

"What about my parents?" she asked shakily. "I-I can't-I don't want to leave them behind."

Fortunately, he had planned for that. "I got that worked out too," he said. "You know I haven't used my fame for anything, but-I did for this. They said that if you're family, your parents will be family too, so they'll be able to come."

Jemma simply nodded, then looked back down at the rings in his palm, and swallowed again. Embarrassingly, his hand had started to shake a little. He knew that what he was asking, what he was offering, was a lot to take in at once, but her silence was fraying his nerves and making him go lightheaded. "Jemma," he said-shit, his voice was shaking too now-"I know this is, um. It's a bit…drastic. And you don't have to answer me right now, not-not if you can't. But the longer we wait, um…" He trailed off before sucking in a breath. "This might be your only chance to-to-"

Suddenly, Jemma reached out to clasp his hand with hers, pressing the rings between their palms. "Yes."

Fitz stopped short, feeling like he'd run face-first into a brick wall. "What?"

She looked up at him breathlessly, her face flushing. "Yes. I'll-I'll marry you."

His mouth fell open as he felt himself sway a little dizzily. He'd hoped with every fiber of his being that she would say yes, that logic would prevail in her eminently rational mind, and even that maybe her heart would want it, too, but there was still a part of him that had been convinced she'd say no. Hearing her say _I'll marry you_ was doing funny things to his heart, making it thump bittersweet in his chest even as it expanded outward with giddy joy. Still, despite all of that, he needed more confirmation.

"Are you sure?" he asked, sounding just as breathless as she looked, and squeezed her hand. He could feel the rings cutting into his skin. "Because that means you'll be getting married. To _me_. We'll be _married_. Legally. You'll be-"

"I'm well aware of what marriage is," Jemma cut in, not unkindly, and suddenly she was laughing and smiling even as tears slipped down her cheeks.

Fitz's eyes went wide with dismay. "Oh no," he said, "you're crying. Christ. That-that wasn't supposed to happen."

Jemma only laughed again and wiped at her eyes with her free hand before taking a breath and sobering a bit. Then she took his hand in both of hers and opened it to look at the rings again. She touched the smaller of the two before looking back up at him. "You would really do this for me?" she asked softly. "For my parents?"

He felt pinned by her gaze, which was serious yet hopeful, even a touch shy. _Of course_ , he thought. _I'd do it a million times if I had to. To save you, I could do anything_. "Yes," he said, just as quietly. Then he shrugged a shoulder, ducking his head. "I mean-I already made the rings, and all."

She breathed out another tiny laugh, then gently curled his fingers back over the rings. "Oh, Fitz," she murmured, and her old admonishment had never sounded so sweet. She slid forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders in a hug.

Fitz slid his arms around her in return and shut his eyes, still half-dizzy from elation. She rested her chin on his shoulder and he could hear her sniffling quietly; he gave her enough time to compose herself before he reluctantly said, "Now we have to do the hard part."

"Oh?" Jemma asked, letting go of him and sitting back. "What's that?"

Fitz dropped the rings back into his pocket and grimaced. "We have to ask your parents. Your _dad_."

Jemma choked on a laugh. "Oh! Right. Yes, because we're not legally adults yet. We'll need their permission." She fixed him with a teasing smile. "Well, since this was your idea…"

He rolled his eyes and hung his head, finding a small amount of comfort at being able to slip back into their usual banter. "Yes, yes, I know-my idea, my funeral. Thanks, Jemma."

She reached out to squeeze his knee through the denim of his jeans. "I'll be right there beside you. I promise. And…I'll reason with them, if we have to."

"Right." He blew out a loud breath, then got to his feet and turned to look at her. "This, um. It's really happening?"

Jemma stood too, that uncharacteristically shy smile back on her face. "Yes. If your offer is still open."

He could have kissed her. He almost did; all of the conditions were right. He'd just proposed marriage and she had accepted, and she was standing close to him, looking at him in what could only be described as bashful awe. He could have easily done it. But he didn't. Instead, against his better judgment, he held his hand out to her. Jemma barely hesitated before taking it, giving it a comforting squeeze. Somewhat reassured, he gave her a nervous smile. "Okay," he said bracingly. "Let's go."

She came along easily, walking beside him hand-in-hand as they headed for the house, and Fitz took every bit of bravery he could from her hand in his and the memory of the way she'd said _yes_. It was almost as if she truly loved him, and was truly delighted by the prospect of being his wife. But that was just wishful thinking.


	10. Chapter 10

Two days later, Fitz stood in Jemma's living room wearing his nicest shirt, tie, and trousers. He couldn't help but fidget, tugging nervously at his shirt collar and feeling like he was about to faint from nerves. His mother flitted around him, making sure his tie was straight and his shirt was tucked in properly; he'd tried to shoo her away, but she'd demanded that he let her fuss, just this once, because she wasn't going to get the opportunity again. Not for the first time, the enormity of what they were doing struck him.

"Mum?" he asked, his voice unsure. "Am I doing the right thing?"

Mrs. Fitz brushed an invisible bit of lint from his shoulder before coming around to stand in front of him. "I think that's something only you can answer, love," she said, reaching up to tighten his tie.

He made a face and leaned away, batting at her hands. "Mum-Mum, please, I can barely breathe you've got it so tight, you're worse than Vic…" When she dropped her hands, he swallowed nervously. "I mean-do you think it's wrong? What we're doing?" He gestured vaguely in the direction of the stairs. Jemma and her own mother had been locked away upstairs in her room since before they'd arrived, getting ready as well. Her father stood outside in the backyard talking to the priest who had agreed to perform the ceremony.

His mother gave him a considering look. "No, I don't think it's wrong. I think it's a very good, noble thing that you're doing."

Fitz shrugged and looked down, shoving his hands into his pockets. The rings he'd made jangled against his fingers. "Is it? It…it sort of feels like cheating the system." He couldn't quite shake the nameless feeling he had in his gut, the one that whispered he was making a huge mistake, that it would all go horribly wrong.

Mrs. Fitz paused in the midst of reaching into her purse to pull out a comb and looked back at him. "Do you not want to do this?" she asked seriously. "If you decide you can't go through with it, there's no shame in it, we'll just-"

"No! No, I do, I do want to," Fitz interrupted hurriedly, a bit louder than he'd meant. His eyes flicked over to the staircase before he looked at his mother again, lowering his voice. "It's just-I know she doesn't…"

He dropped his gaze to the ground. How could he adequately explain his real fears to his mother without telling her the truth? He'd held it inside of him for such a long time; he worried that saying it out loud would invite the catastrophe he was so afraid of. Yet, his mother was the person he trusted most in the world besides Jemma. He took a deep breath. "I love her," he mumbled.

His mother moved to start tugging the comb gently through his curls. "I know," she said simply.

Fitz frowned. She mustn't have understood him correctly; she thought he meant as friends. "No-Mum, I _love_ her."

She tapped a finger under his chin to get him to lift his head, then looked him in the eye. "I _know_ ," she repeated softly. Fitz's heart stuttered, but when he did nothing but stare back at her in stunned shock, she chuckled and ran the comb through the other side of his hair part. "I have eyes," she said, "and I'm your mother. I know these things."

He spluttered a bit, too thrown to try and duck away from the comb. "Well-then you know why-I mean-you know she doesn't…" The words stuck in his throat. " _She_ doesn't-love _me_."

Finally satisfied with his appearance, his mother put the comb back in her purse. When she turned back to him, her eyes were kind, shining with understanding. "Oh, Leo," she said, smiling. "She might not love you the same way you do her-she might not be _in_ love-but Jemma loves you in every other way that matters. Anyone can see that."

It was slightly pathetic, how desperate he was for his mother's reassurance, for anything that would validate his decision to ask Jemma to marry him-or her decision to say yes. "You really think so?" he asked, rocking back on his heels.

Mrs. Fitz clucked, as if it were obvious. "I know so," she said. "The two of you have been inseparable since you met, and she's over at our house just as much as you're over here. I've never seen her be anything but smiles when you're together. She thinks the world of you. Trust me. And who knows-someday...someday she might love you the same way." She smiled encouragingly at him and, after a pause, he smiled hesitantly back. Her smile turned into a beam then and she reached out to grasp him by the shoulders, giving him a once-over. "But don't worry about that right now. Look at you. You look so handsome." She sighed. "My boy, all grown up."

Fitz felt his ears turn pink as he bashfully ducked his head. "Thanks, Mum," he said.

Just then, the door to the backyard opened and Mr. Simmons came inside, followed by the priest. "Is everyone ready to start?" he asked.

Fitz's heart jumped into his throat as his nerves came rushing back. His mother squeezed his shoulder as he turned to watch Mr. Simmons go to the foot of the stairs and look up. "Helen?" he called.

There was the sound of a door opening upstairs, followed by footsteps. A second later Jemma's mother was coming downstairs, smiling at everyone assembled. "You timed that perfectly," she said, kissing her husband on the cheek. "We just finished." Then she turned and blinked in apparent surprise at not seeing her daughter right behind her. She craned her neck to look upstairs. "Jemma? It's alright, you can come down now."

Fitz unconsciously held his breath, unable to tear his eyes away from the staircase. There was a short pause before he saw Jemma's feet come into view, slowly walking down the steps, followed by her hand gripping the banister. When she came fully into view, he felt all the air leave his lungs.

She was wearing a simple, sleeveless white sundress, fitted to her waist, where the skirt flared out slightly to just above her knees. She'd left her hair down, curling softly over her shoulders, and there was a crown of tiny white flowers woven together resting atop her head. Her expression was shy-still not something he was used to seeing on her-and it made her look every inch the rosy, blushing bride.

He didn't think he'd ever seen her look more beautiful.

Jemma kept her head down until she reached the foot of the stairs; then she smiled briefly at her parents before turning toward him. When their eyes met, his stomach clenched as her cheeks visibly flushed, and she bit her lip as she walked toward him. He realized that he was staring, his mouth hanging open, and snapped it shut just as she came stop a stop in front of him.

"Hi, Fitz," she whispered, her voice shaky.

"Hey," he breathed back. Somehow, hearing her sound just as nervous as he felt went a long way toward reassuring him. It reminded him that he wasn't alone in the huge step they were about to take, that she would be right there beside him. Behind her, he saw his mother give Jemma's parents a pointed look before turning to look at the priest. He clasped his hands together and smiled at all of them.

"If you will follow me outside, we can get started," he said.

As their parents walked past them toward the door, Fitz awkwardly offered Jemma his arm. A small smile spread over her face as she took it, slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow. "You look nice," she murmured.

Despite his nerves, Fitz smiled too, pleased that she noticed. "So do you," he replied as he led her outside. "I mean-you look beautiful."

Jemma squeezed his arm where she was holding on to it and ducked her head again, but let go a moment later when they were standing before the priest. It was a simple setup: Jemma's mother had brought some potted flowers to the back patio from her garden. There were no guests or witnesses aside from their parents, no processional, no bouquet of flowers, no veil. It was only the two of them, together.

Fitz took a deep breath to try and dispel the anxious tingle buzzing along his nerves as the priest began his opening speech. He was desperate to know what Jemma was thinking, for even a hint of what she was feeling, but he couldn't turn to look at her, not in the middle of the ceremony. All he could see in his periphery was that she was listening intently to the priest. But just as a cold sweat was threatening to break on his forehead, he felt her hand move to take his, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tightly. He carefully let a breath out, trying to let it anchor him. _She'd_ initiated the contact, _she_ wanted the comfort of his touch. She was every bit as nervous as he was.

And she didn't let go, even when the priest directed Fitz to turn toward her for his vows. She shifted her grip to let him grasp her hand between both of his and gave him the tiniest of encouraging smiles as he began to repeat after the priest. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done, keeping his eyes on hers as he promised to love and cherish her, imbuing his words with every ounce of honest truth that he could. It was everything that he really wanted to say to her, everything that his heart yearned to shout to the world but his fear kept closed inside; they were the words he knew he could never say otherwise. By some miracle he managed to keep his voice even and not stammer, though his hands shook slightly as he slipped her ring onto her finger. He breathed a sigh of relief when it fit perfectly.

Then it was Jemma's turn to say her vows. Everything around them fell away until all that was left was his hand in hers and the priest leading her through her own promises. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but her eyes were steady and clear and there was a quiet sincerity about her that made his heart ache. She clearly meant every word she was saying. Jemma wouldn't lie, not about this. Maybe his mother was right-maybe she _did_ love him in almost every way that mattered, enough to commit herself to him of her own free will and be content with her decision. It made a slow warmth spread through him as she placed his own ring on his finger, the love he felt for her rising close to the surface, struggling to break free.

The priest smiled at them, folding his hands in front of him. "By the authority vested in me by the State of Virginia, I now pronounce you husband and wife," he said, ending the ceremony. "Leo, you may kiss your bride."

Fitz froze, his eyes widening. He'd known that this would be a part of it-it was tradition and this was a traditional ceremony, or as close to one as they could manage-but now that it came down to it, he didn't think he could do it. He'd never planned on having his first kiss be quite so public, in full view of their parents and a priest, where he was surely doomed to fail. Aside from that, he was afraid that if he kissed her, Jemma would be able to see right through him, straight to where he kept his true feelings for her hidden, and she would be so disappointed, because he'd failed at being her best friend by falling in love with her.

But Jemma bit her lip and took a step forward into his space as she squeezed his hand again. _Oh god_ , he thought wildly, _there's no way out and she's going to do it, she's actually going to kiss me and I'm not ready_ -

His eyes fluttered shut just as Jemma leaned up to press her mouth to his. Her lips were warm and soft, and the kiss was chaste but so unbearably sweet that it made the full force of his longing for her crash into his chest like a freight train. It took every ounce of restraint he had not to grab her by the shoulders and kiss her with abandon. He couldn't give himself away and besides, people were watching. Jemma's _parents_ were watching.

He had just enough time to tentatively kiss her back before she broke it and stepped away. She couldn't meet his eyes for a brief second, but when she finally did she was smiling tremulously, almost as if she was afraid of his reaction, and her cheeks were stained a very fetching pink. Fitz felt the bottom fall out of his heart.

The priest gestured for them to turn and face their parents; Jemma threaded her fingers through his again as he blew out a breath, and they both tried to look brave in the face of the open emotion their parents were displaying. There were tears on Jemma's father's cheeks, and her mother was audibly sniffling. His own mother was smiling gently with kind, knowing eyes, and he had to swallow down the sudden lump that had lodged in his throat.

Later, after they had signed their marriage license and had dinner with the priest, Fitz and Jemma managed to escape upstairs to her room for a few minutes alone. The air between them was charged with a certain amount of tension that left Fitz unsure of his decisions again-it was a see-saw with him, it really was-and feeling like he'd just participated in an arranged marriage. There was none of the joy and giddiness he'd always thought he'd feel when he got married, no excited anticipation of the future spread out before them.

Maybe it was because there _was_ no future ahead of them. Not an easy one, at least. The comet would see to that.

"It's a bit weird, isn't it?" he asked. He was pacing near the window, trying to walk off his nervous energy. "We're _married_. Legally married."

"We are." Jemma was sitting on her bed, her hands folded in her lap. "I thought…maybe I'd feel different after."

He reached up to scratch just behind his ear. "Yeah. Yeah, me too. Instead, it's just…I mean, we won't even, um-be living together. I'm going back home with Mum." He felt his ears turn red at the thought of him and Jemma, _living together_ , and snuck a glance at her. She was still staring off into the middle distance, slowly twisting her wedding ring around her finger. She shrugged, then sighed quietly.

"I know," she murmured. "It's not exactly how I imagined my wedding would go, if I ever got married."

Fitz paused mid-step, his heart turning to ash in his chest. It suddenly felt hard to breathe, and there was a vague sort of panic crawling up his throat, making his face flush.

 _Of course it's not what she expected, you forced her into this, it's the only option she had, and you're an idiot for thinking she could ever feel anything more for you-_

"I-um. I know it's, um…" He couldn't look at her. It was hard enough as it was trying to force out the words; if he saw the disappointment and resignation that he feared was on her face, he wouldn't be able to speak at all. Once again, he doubted his decision to ask her to marry him. His fears and insecurities were overwhelming him, and he felt sick. "I know this isn't what you wanted. I'm…I'm sorry. But-maybe it won't be so bad-"

"Don't apologize!"

Jemma's cry forced him to look up at her in surprise. She'd shot to her feet, her hands clenching into fists at her sides, and although her face was pale, her eyes were fierce. She took a step toward him. "Don't say you're sorry," she said, her voice wobbling, "because I'm not. You-you're-" And then she closed the distance between them to throw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Fitz's arms went around her automatically, and when she gave no indication of wanting to let go, he closed his eyes and leaned into her, letting himself soak in the feel of her in his arms for one traitorous moment.

"I still don't know what to say, that you're willing to do this for me and my family," she added after a moment. "I don't know if I ever will. It's the most selfless thing anyone's ever done for me, and I can't-I'll never be able to repay you."

Privately, Fitz still thought he was being extremely selfish. He was willing to do anything to keep Jemma alive and with him, even if it meant marrying her when they weren't in a real relationship. It almost felt like an abuse of his privilege of being on the pre-selected list, but he couldn't bring himself to truly feel guilty. Not when it meant that he knew Jemma and her parents would be safe. He breathed out and dared to rest his cheek on her hair, taking care not to crush the flowers woven through it.

"You don't have to pay me back," he said awkwardly. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel indebted to him. "I'd do anything for you. You know that, right? You-you're my best friend."

Jemma nodded into his shoulder, squeezing her arms even tighter around him. "I know. You're still a hero." When he only scoffed in reply, she finally pulled away to look at him. "You're _my_ hero."

The warm flush that went through him at that- _her hero-_ -was at odds with his dismay at seeing that her eyes were wet with tears. "Oh god," he said, wincing. "I'm sorry. I'm going to be crap at this. We, um, we haven't even been married two hours and I've already made you cry. Again." His hands reached out to flutter uselessly over her shoulders.

Thankfully, Jemma just laughed quietly as she carefully wiped at her eyes, trying not to smudge her makeup. "You're not crap, Fitz. You couldn't be."

"Probably could," he muttered, ducking his head and scuffing the toe of his shoe against the carpet. He'd never dealt well with compliments to anything but his intellect.

Jemma shook her head. "No. Fitz…"

She'd started off earnest and insistent, but his name trailed off her tongue as she looked up at him, and whatever it was she'd meant to say disappeared. It left her eyes brimming with emotion, the space between them charged with a different sort of energy than before. Fitz felt his mouth go a little slack, his senses suddenly wide open and alert. He thought he recognized the look in her eyes; it was one he'd seen reflected in his own before. _Longing_. But that couldn't be right, because she didn't, she _couldn't_ , she'd never given any indication that she might…

Then Jemma blinked and looked away, and the moment was gone. She tutted quietly to herself and stood up a bit straighter. "We should probably go back downstairs before our parents realize we're missing," she said.

Fitz let out a breath, feeling the tension dissipate, and nodded. "Yeah. Right. Come on, then." But as he turned to head for the hallway and the stairs, Jemma reached out and tugged on his hand to stop him. He only had enough time to look at her in surprise before she went up on her toes and pressed a lingering kiss to his cheek. He felt his breath catch in his throat and was sure Jemma heard; he could only pray that she didn't question him about it and just took his blushing and stammering as part of his habitual social awkwardness.

Then she was stepping away and dropping his hand, smiling faintly as she tucked her hair behind one ear. "Thank you, again," she said, and turned to leave. Fitz followed in a daze, his cheek tingling where her lips had touched it, but it all felt a bit hollow. He knew she was being sincere in her thanks, but it didn't sit well with him. He didn't _want_ her thanks; he wanted…something real. Concrete. He didn't want Jemma to look at their marriage as a favor he was doing for her, but instead as something special between them, maybe even the foundation for a real relationship. As they went downstairs, his already precarious mood threatened to take another nosedive, but then he caught sight of his mother, and her words from earlier in the evening came back to him. While it was true that Jemma didn't love him romantically, he was still sure she did in all other ways that mattered. That, at least, Fitz truly believed. It wasn't the way he'd expected his own wedding to go, either, but it wasn't a terrible start. That knowledge went a long way toward soothing the uneasy feeling in his stomach.


	11. Chapter 11

It took less than a week to shatter Fitz's hopes of anything resembling a real, true marriage.

At first, he'd been afraid that there would be an insurmountable awkwardness between them, best friends turned husband and wife out of necessity. But when Jemma had shown up at his house the next day acting as if nothing between them had changed, he felt both relief and disappointment. The part of him that hated change was relieved that getting married hadn't damaged their relationship, but the larger part of him-the part that was hopelessly in love with Jemma-felt disappointed that she hadn't discovered she was in love with him overnight.

It was a silly thing to hope for, and he wasn't exactly proud of it, but he'd still wished for it all the same. However, all wasn't lost. Jemma still wanted to spend most of her time with him, talking about every subject imaginable, whispering their fears and concerns about the comet and the future, doing what they could to prepare for the upcoming evacuation. The only difference was the rings on their fingers.

Nearly a week after the wedding, Jemma's parents sent them to the grocery store to see what was left of the canned and dry goods, trying to stretch what little food they had out over the last few weeks before they left. Fitz drove them there in his mother's car. It wasn't far, but it was still surreal to him, seeing the streets and businesses he'd come to know over the past few years gradually turn into something out of a post-apocalyptic nightmare. The irony wasn't lost on him. People had stopped tending their lawns; many of the shops were closed and boarded up-the ones that hadn't been looted, at least-and there was very little traffic out on the roads aside from the National Guard. He wondered if most everyone in the city had left yet, or if, for whatever reason, they were waiting.

There were only a few cars parked outside the grocery store when they arrived. As they went inside and Jemma grabbed a basket, the manager gave them a strained smile and nod from where he was manning the lone open register. He looked to be the only employee there.

They walked quickly to the canned goods aisle, murmuring quietly over the remaining selection. Most of the shelves were picked clean and it was obvious the store hadn't had a delivery come in recently. Eventually they settled on a few jars of tomato sauce and some packages of dry pasta before going to see if there was any bottled water left.

As they turned onto the beverage aisle, they spotted someone at the far end, looking over a short stack of bottled water cases. Fitz's stomach tensed in anticipation as he realized that it was Grant Ward.

The older boy had never cared much for him, but he'd always managed to get his friends to do his dirty work when it came to teasing and bullying, leaving his reputation and image squeaky clean. However, once the word had spread around school that Fitz and his mother had been put on the pre-selected list, he hadn't bothered trying to hide his disdain. Fitz did his best to stay out of his way and avoid an outright confrontation, and had been very relieved when the school year ended. He thought he'd never have to face Ward again, but apparently his luck had run out.

Ward looked up at the sound of their footsteps approaching and when he recognized them, his mouth twisted into a sneer. Fitz sighed and mentally tried to ready himself for what was sure to be an awkward exchange. In a show of peace, he merely nodded a hello and pointed at the cases of bottled water. "Hey. Um-are those all yours, or…?"

"Maybe," Ward replied shortly. "Depends on how many I can carry out."

He could almost _feel_ Jemma rolling her eyes behind him. _All of them, probably_. He nodded again. "Right. Well. I'll just, uh…yeah." He turned to hand off the grocery basket to Jemma, then made a show of inspecting the bottles of juice on the shelf next to the water. Behind him, Ward snorted rudely, and he fought the urge to bash his head into the display case in front of him _. Perfect, Fitz. Very smooth. This is why he stole your clothes in gym class freshman year._

After a moment of tense silence, however, it became clear that Ward's focus wasn't on the water; he was staring at Jemma. Bristling, Fitz looked up, something snarky on the tip of his tongue, but stopped when he realized what had caught Ward's attention. His eyes were fixed on Jemma's hands holding the handle of the grocery basket, and the ring shining on her finger. Then his eyes shot to Fitz's left hand and the ring he wore. Before Fitz could say anything, Ward barked out a short, humorless laugh.

"You're kidding, right?" he asked, disgust plain in his voice. "You got _married_?"

Jemma's expression closed off, her mouth pressing down into a thin line. "That's none of your business," she said coolly, just as Fitz muttered, "Shove off, Ward."

Ward's eyebrows went up. "You _did_. Unbelievable. You got your name on the list, didn't you? You married him just to get your name on the lottery list."

Fitz clenched his fists as something like cold fear slithered into his stomach. "Shove _off_ , Ward," he repeated, louder.

Ward laughed again, still completely devoid of humor, and held his hands out as if Fitz was an annoying dog he needed to placate. "Sorry if I'm just a little offended here. You got on the list without doing anything-no, seriously, you didn't earn that spot, you did _nothing_ , you just happened to have your telescope pointed in the right direction one night. You get a nice spot in that cave while the rest of us have to run for the hills and hope it's far enough, that those missiles work and the world doesn't end. And now you've got _her_ on the list on your coattails." He gestured angrily at Jemma. "Must be nice, cheating the system. I never had you pinned down as a cheater, Jemma. You always liked following the rules."

Fitz swallowed hard as the the fear in his stomach boiled up to snare his heart. Without knowing it, Ward had tapped into his guilt over being pre-selected and taken one of his biggest fears regarding their marriage and used it like a knife to the chest. It was one thing for him to target Fitz, but another thing entirely for him to go after Jemma, who had never been anything but kind to him. He could feel his composure starting to unravel and tried to breathe slow, tried to back away, tried to tell himself that he was the better man and he wouldn't let himself be baited.

"That's not-" Jemma started, but Ward cut her off.

"You know," he said, "everyone thought you two were fucking each other, but I didn't think you had it in you, Fitz-"

His vision flashed red and before he realized what he was doing, Fitz had taken a step forward and shoved Ward hard in the chest. He stumbled back a few steps, his eyes widening briefly in surprise, but they hardened when Fitz crowded in on him again. Ignoring Jemma's shocked cry of "Fitz!", he fumed, "Don't you dare say another word about her! It isn't like that-"

"Yeah?" Ward drew himself up to his full height and pushed back, causing Fitz to bump back against the cases of water. "Keep telling yourself that and see how long she stays with you once you get to that cave."

Furious, Fitz tried to go after Ward again, but there was a clatter of plastic hitting the tiled floor behind him and suddenly Jemma was pulling him back, one arm around his waist and the other hooked around his elbow. "Don't. He's not worth it," she pleaded, her mouth pressed against his ear. It sent a frisson of heat zipping through him, even as he struggled to contain his anger.

Confident Fitz wasn't going to strike again, Ward straightened his shirt with a glare. "Listen to your _wife_ , Fitz," he spat derisively, and stooped to pick up two cases of water. "Hope you don't plan on trying to keep anyone else away like that, because you'll lose." And, after giving Jemma a very blatant and suggestive once-over, he turned and stalked off in the direction of the frozen food.

Fitz let out a harsh breath, barely feeling Jemma's fingernails cutting into his skin where she was clutching at his arm, and shrugged her off, bending to pick up the last remaining case of water. Then he set his jaw and started walking toward the front of the store and the registers, not bothering to wait for Jemma to pick up their basket and follow him. He could feel her watching him as she paid for their groceries, but he kept his gaze trained on his feet. It was only once they were back out in the parking lot that Jemma spoke.

"Don't let him get to you," she said. "He was just trying to wind you up."

Fitz huffed as she opened one of the car doors and he got the case of water settled in the back seat. "Yeah? Well, it worked."

Jemma sighed and put the grocery bags she was carrying down in the floorboard, then shut the door and went to get in on the passenger side of the car. Fitz had already thrown himself into the driver's seat and slammed his door shut, angrily turning the keys in the ignition. She was watching him again, her face troubled, but he ignored her and focused on driving, keeping his eyes trained straight ahead on the road.

It wasn't really Ward's insinuations that Fitz couldn't man up to a physical relationship that had him so upset. It was the reminder that they had married purely for legal reasons that had done him in. He knew he shouldn't care about Ward's opinions, but it hurt more than he wanted to admit, hearing someone else vocalize some of his worst fears. Now his insecurity was flaring up worse than it ever had before, and it left the air between him and Jemma feeling tense and strained.

They were halfway home before Jemma spoke up again. "Maybe…maybe I shouldn't wear my ring," she said hesitantly.

It was like a blow to the face. "What?" he rasped. It felt as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the car.

Jemma bit her lip. "Maybe we both shouldn't," she amended. "I don't want to cause any trouble or any-misunderstandings."

Fitz didn't say anything. He wasn't sure he could-if he did, his voice would surely betray him and show just how harshly she'd ripped his heart from his chest.

"It would just be for a little while! Until the evacuation." Her voice had gone squeaky with anxiety, but it did nothing to reassure him. "I-I could string it on my necklace." In his periphery, he saw Jemma's hands go to the pendant necklace he'd made for her, her fingers sliding along the delicate silver chain. "Fitz? Say something. Please."

He sucked in a breath and clenched his hands over the steering wheel. "It's-yeah. Okay. Do what you want, Jemma."

Well, he'd definitely failed at being nonchalant and casual. He sounded gruff, his voice tight with stress. His prickly side was showing again for the first time in ages and it was drowning out rational thought, burying it beneath the sound of his blood roaring in his ears. She didn't want to wear his ring. She didn't want anyone to see it. She didn't want anyone to know.

Jemma twisted in her seat to face him. "Fitz, you know it's not-I-I don't want to cause any problems for _you_." She said the last very carefully, like she was trying to make a specific point. She knew he got defensive and tended to block people out when he was angry. "I just think it's what would be best for right now."

Fitz blinked rapidly. "No, I get it. It's fine. Don't wear it, then."

"Fitz-"

"Jemma!" he snapped, far harsher than he meant to, and his stomach twisted when he saw Jemma physically recoil, her face stricken. Some of the anger and hurt drained away then, only to be replaced by shame. He sighed and forced himself to take a mental step back as he turned the car into Jemma's driveway, then put it into park and switched off the ignition. In the absence of noise from the car's engine, he hung his head and squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Jemma," he repeated, quieter this time, "I'm...I'm sorry."

There was a pause before she reached over to cover his hand with her own where it lay on his knee. "It's not because I'm ashamed," she said softly. "I just don't want anyone else to do what Grant did."

His mouth twitched in a pale imitation of a smile. Jemma had always been able to read him like an open book when it mattered, except in one very important way. "I know," he mumbled, even though he wasn't really sure he did.

She smiled at him and gave his hand a squeeze before letting go. "Come on, let's get everything inside."

As soon as they were inside the house and had put the groceries away, Jemma unhooked her necklace from around her neck and added her ring to it. It clinked a little against the pendant as she put it back on, settling just below the hollow of her throat. Fitz tried to focus on the way Jemma smiled to herself as she adjusted the clasp, and not on how glaringly empty her finger looked. It had only been a few days but he'd already gotten used to seeing her wear the ring, the dark metal contrasting against her pale skin. He tried to keep his face neutral as she went and found a chain good enough for him to use, and swallowed against the raw pain in his chest as he removed his own ring. He tried not to flinch as she put the chain on for him, her fingers brushing against his neck. And he tried to smile for her when she stepped away, looking very pleased with herself.

He didn't want her to know just how much hiding their rings hurt him. He hated himself for getting so worked up over it, because to Jemma it was probably a trivial thing, a non-issue, but as it always was where she was concerned, it mattered just a bit too much to him.

Later that night, back at his own house, he gripped the sides of the sink as he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. The shape of his ring was clearly visible beneath the cotton of his t-shirt. It felt like it was burning a hole in his chest.

Despite what Jemma had said to reassure him, he couldn't shake the nagging voice in his head that said she _was_ ashamed, that she wanted to hide the visible trappings of their new relationship. He wanted to shout it to the world, but she didn't even want to whisper it. But what more could he have expected? She'd never shown any interest in him deeper than friendship, and he was too much of a coward to admit his feelings. He needed her alive and beside him more than he could risk losing her completely. And he'd accomplished that by marrying her and getting her name on the lottery list. She would live. That was all he'd wanted. Anything more was too much to hope for.

He would do right by her, he promised himself. Once they moved to the Ark, or after they left, if Jemma found someone else, if she fell in love, he wouldn't hold her back. He'd give her a divorce, no questions asked. He would do his best to be happy for her, to be the same supportive best friend he'd always been. He couldn't deny her happiness.

He closed his eyes as tears pricked at them. He'd let her go, if it came to that, if that was what she wanted. He would. Even if it broke his heart beyond repair, he'd let her go.


	12. Chapter 12

On the morning of their scheduled evacuation, Fitz and Jemma stood in the middle of his room, surrounded by stacks of neatly-folded clothes. His suitcase lay open on his bed, and with Jemma's assistance, he was deciding on what clothes would be the best to bring, which items would be multi-purpose down in the caves.

"Have you thought about what else you want to bring?" she asked, rolling up the t-shirts he'd already picked to go. "That isn't clothes, I mean."

"Not really." Hands on his hips, Fitz turned to look at his bookshelves and the top of his dresser, which were crammed with mementos, school awards, and photos. "I've got an old photo album I definitely want to bring, but the rest of it…how much is any of it going to matter, you know, after?"

Jemma hummed thoughtfully as she started putting his t-shirts into his suitcase. "Fair enough. I know Mum was having a hard time deciding what was essential and what wasn't when we were packing last night. There's not much you can carry in one small suitcase and a carry-on."

Fitz glanced up at her, smiling, then shook his head at a pair of shoes before throwing them back in his closet. "Why am I not surprised that you've already packed?"

"You know I like to be prepared well in advance." She gave him a smile in return that bordered on teasing. "Besides, I knew I'd be over here today helping _you_ , so I thought it would be better if I went ahead and did my packing first."

Then she turned to another pile of clothes on his bed. When Fitz saw what she was picking up to fold, he yelped and dropped his other pair of shoes before rushing forward to slap her hands away. "No!" he cried. "You do not touch those! I can pack my pants on my own, thank you!"

Jemma watched in open-mouthed silence as he gathered up all of his boxer-briefs and backed away, clutching them to his chest. Then she rolled her eyes and reached for the stack of jeans next to his pillow. "Don't be such a child, Fitz, you might as well get used to it. I'm sure I'll have my hands on them plenty after we get to the Ark."

Fitz nearly dropped them all then as his arms went a bit slack, an ugly heat crawling its way up his neck. _Mother of all things_. Jemma kept rolling up his jeans until she noticed that he was staring at her; then she looked up, saw his face, and realized how her words could have been taken. Her hands flew to her neck as she blushed scarlet.

"Not like that!" she squeaked, eyes wide. "I-I meant-when we do laundry, I might have to handle them then-"

He swallowed and edged around to the far side of the bed, pushing away the tantalizing mental image of Jemma's hands on his boxer-briefs while he was still wearing them. He dumped them on the bed, a safe distance from her, and started shoving them into the webbing on the inside of the suitcase lid. "Yeah, well-you just try to keep your- _hands_ off my pants for now, yeah?"

Jemma laughed quietly at that, her fingers slipping down from her neck to worry at the chain of her necklace and the pendant and ring hanging from it. "Alright, Fitz. But just remember, I've got-clothes of my own, that you'll have to get used to seeing-"

He groaned loudly, making a show of throwing his head back and staring up at the ceiling.

" _And_ , you might have to handle them too." This time, Jemma looked a little amused by his discomfort instead of embarrassed, even though her cheeks were still pink. "It's just part of living together, that's all."

Fitz really didn't want to think about Jemma's underthings, or Jemma _in_ her underthings, at least not while she was in the room. He scrubbed a hand over his face and blew out a loud breath before looking back down to finish packing his underwear. "I'll leave that to you," he said, coughing when his voice cracked. "I might wash them wrong or something."

"Nonsense." Jemma squeezed another rolled-up pair of jeans into his tightly-packed suitcase. "I'm not going to wash your laundry for you all of the time the way your mother does." She flashed him a quick smile when he glared at her. "I'll teach you. And you're brilliant, so you should pick it up quite easily." She fit in one last pair of jeans, patted them, and then stood back with a satisfied sound. "There! I think that's your clothes sorted then, once you're through." Then she looked around. "Oh! Socks! You'll need at least a few pairs of socks." She crossed quickly over to his dresser and pulled the top drawer open, rifling through it before pulling out a few pairs of white socks and a few that were darker. Fitz took them from her as she handed them over and stuffed them into the webbing next to his boxer-briefs; then he laid his jacket flat on top of everything, folded the arms in, and shut the suitcase.

It took a little bit of tugging on the zipper pull, and Jemma sitting on top of the lid, but they eventually got the suitcase completely shut. Fitz grunted as he pulled it down off of his bed and set it against the wall by the door. Then they both collapsed on the end of his bed, looking around the room in silence. He tried to take all of it in, the room that had been his sanctuary for the past few years.

"It's strange, isn't it?" Jemma murmured after a moment. "That we're leaving all of this behind."

Fitz smiled faintly. She always knew what he was thinking. "Yeah," he replied, scuffing his heel against the carpet. "I've already slept in this bed for the last time. Mum won't ever make dinner in the kitchen again, we won't marathon Doctor Who on the telly…"

"No more late nights out on the roof," she added, nodding toward his window.

He nodded too, then sighed. "I know we're going to be as safe as we can be in Missouri and that it won't _all_ be like a military camp, but…" He trailed off, hesitant to voice his thoughts out loud. He knew, though, that Jemma would never judge him for being sentimental, not when she knew he was being serious about it. "It's just…what if it's not really a _home_? Or it doesn't feel like one? We'll be there for two years at least."

"We'll make it a home," Jemma said earnestly. "I believe that it's people who make a home, not the place." She gently knocked his elbow with hers. "And we'll still have each other there, yeah? And our parents. That's what matters."

"Yeah," he said, and gave her a small smile. He couldn't help but think of how he'd been so lucky to find a home in Jemma when he hadn't been able to anywhere else, and how just being near her reassured him like nothing else could.

Her smile brightened at the sight of his, and she reached out to squeeze his knee before she stood up. "Come on," she said, walking toward his bookshelves. "I'll help you pick out some things to put in your backpack."

-:-

Later that night, they stood with their parents on the sidewalk in front of his house, waiting on the Army bus that would take them and other lottery selectees to the Ark. Brimming with nervous energy, Fitz kept jiggling his hand against his thigh, and it was only Jemma's presence right next to him that kept him from outright pacing.

Jemma looked past him to where their parents were standing a few steps away with their luggage, talking quietly, then back to him. After a moment she reached out to lightly grasp his hand, stilling it.

"Don't worry," she said quietly. "Everything will be fine. You had all the paperwork signed and sent in."

"I know," he replied, and actively tried to focus on staying still. "I'm sorry. I just-you know I worry."

She gave him a reassuring smile. Then they heard the distant rumble of an engine and looked up. At the far end of the street, they saw a bus turn the corner, followed by an Army truck. Fitz felt Jemma tense slightly next to him despite her outward calm, and he shifted his hand in hers to give her fingers a quick squeeze.

Once the bus came to a stop near them, the door opened and two soldiers got out, one of them holding a clipboard and a flashlight. Mrs. Fitz took hold of both her and Fitz's suitcases and started forward toward the bus, but the soldiers stopped her. "Hold on just a minute," one of them said briskly. "We need to see some ID."

The soldier with the clipboard quickly flipped through a list attached to it. "Fitz?" he asked.

Mrs. Fitz nodded. "Yes, that's us."

He nodded back and switched on his flashlight. "IDs, please."

Fitz handed his mother the papers and cards he'd already had out waiting, and she combined them with her own to hold out to the soldier. "There's two of us," she said. "Me and my son, Leo. Leopold."

The soldier looked from the list to the IDs, then at her. "Karen?" he asked.

She nodded, then looked back at Fitz. Taking his cue, he dropped Jemma's hand to place his lightly at her back, bringing her up next to him. "This is my-my wife Jemma. We have a marriage license." He pointed to it in his mother's hand.

The soldier with the clipboard looked from the license to their IDs, then shone the beam of his flashlight into Jemma's face in order to get a better look at her. She shied away a little, squinting her eyes shut against the glare; Fitz pressed his hand harder into her back.

After a moment, the soldier nodded and clicked off his flashlight. "Okay. Everything checks out." Then he turned back to the bus. "Alright, let's go, let's move out!"

Mrs. Fitz took hold of their suitcases again and strode toward the bus, where the other soldier stood waiting to help her load them. Giving Jemma a quick smile-nothing to worry about, everything was fine-Fitz hefted his backpack up more securely on his shoulders and went to follow her.

Almost immediately, Jemma realized that her parents weren't following too. Her steps slowed as she looked back at them, still standing on the sidewalk and looking faintly stunned. "Mum…?" she asked, then looked back at the soldiers. "Wait, sir-my parents, they're supposed to be coming too!"

Fitz, who had stopped in his tracks the moment Jemma had, swallowed against the pit of dread that had just formed in his stomach. "Yeah-the Simmonses, they're on the list too, yeah?" he echoed. "They're coming."

The soldier with the clipboard had taken it back out and was looking through the pages again, spelling out their last name under his breath. After a moment, he shook his head. "They're not on here."

"What?" Fitz and Jemma both cried, just as Mrs. Fitz, standing on the first step up into the bus, said, "Check the bloody list again!"

Leaving Jemma to walk over to the soldier, Fitz craned his head to try and get a look at the clipboard. "No, no no, you don't understand," he said hurriedly, feeling panic rising. It had to be a mistake. This wasn't happening, not _now_. "They've got to be on there, Victor at Civil Defense said he sent their names to the White House!"

The soldier simply shook his head again. "I'm sorry, they're not on here. They're not authorized to board." He looked back at the driver of the bus, who was pointedly tapping his wristwatch. "We have to go."

"But sir, wait, I just-" The soldier ignored him in favor of getting their luggage loaded onto the bus. Fitz turned to look desperately back at Jemma and her parents, a feeling of betrayal crushing his chest and making it hard to breathe. "I put you on the list! Mr. Simmons, they said your names were on the list. Jemma-I-I put them on the list, I swear!"

Jemma was standing, seemingly frozen to the spot, looking between him and the soldiers with horrified disbelief on her face. Her mother looked equally upset, but a grim sort of acceptance had come over her father. "We're not on the list, Leo," he said, far too calmly.

Behind him, one of the soldiers shouted, "I need the Fitzes on the bus, _now_."

Fitz walked toward them, but stopped when Jemma took a step back. It hurt just as much as if she'd slapped him in the face. He could only watch, chest constricting and heart pounding, as she looked up at her father, then back to him. There was a war waging in her eyes.

"I-" she said, looking between them again. "Dad, I-I can't just _leave_ you-"

"What?" her father exclaimed.

Fitz felt like the ground had collapsed beneath him. "No, no, no," he mumbled, spurred to close the remaining distance between them and take her hand, to pull her to him. But she resisted, even as her father tried to guide her to Fitz, telling him to get her on the bus. Jemma dug her heels in, dragging them to a halt again.

"Dad," she repeated, eyes wild and panicked, "I can't just leave you and Mum here, I _can't_ , you'll-you'll-"

Her father grasped her by the shoulders and ran a hand over her cheek. "Jemma, you _can_. I'm telling you to. Get on the bus, we'll be fine."

Jemma shook her head, trying to cling to his hands, but he wouldn't let her. "That's a lie, Dad, you know it is!"

Mr. Simmons met Fitz's eyes over Jemma's head. Something like understanding passed between them, and Fitz reached out to pull at her elbow again, to turn her toward him. She came easily, swinging around to look at him with wide, devastated eyes. Everything was happening so fast, falling apart too quickly for him to process, and the only thing he could focus on was Jemma and the terrible indecision on her face. _Jemma Jemma Jemma_. He tried to lead her back to the bus one more time. She refused to move, feet frozen again, but couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from his. It was as if she was begging him not to make her choose.

His heart shattered into pieces. He knew, right then, that he'd lost her. He'd tried but he'd failed, and Jemma wasn't going to come with him. She was going to stay, and she was going to die.

With his entire world slipping through his fingers, the walls he'd built and the secrets he kept didn't matter so much anymore. "I don't want to go without you," he said brokenly, sliding his fingers down her arm to grasp her hand. "Please, Jemma, I-I love you."

Tears spilled down her cheeks then, her whole face crumpling. "I feel the same way!" she cried. "I love you too, you're my best friend in the world-"

"No, Jemma, you're more than that, I _love_ you." It was a low blow, he knew, borne out of desperation, and there were tears on his cheeks now, too, but he couldn't care. This was his last chance. "So _please_ , please come with me."

Jemma's mouth had fallen open in shock, her eyes going even wider as she stared back at him, her face bone-white in the light of the street lamps. Behind her, he could see tears on her mother's face, too.

"Come or stay, young lady, but this bus is moving out." It was the soldier again, closer this time, and suddenly there was a hand clamping down on the top of his backpack, dragging him backward. Jemma stumbled forward a step as his hand in hers tugged at her before it was wrenched free, but she didn't move to follow him, even when her father tried nudging her. She just stared, her face heartbroken, as the soldier pulled him onto the bus. He didn't protest. All of the fight had left him the second he realized she couldn't answer him, and he knew nothing he said would change her mind.

He didn't break her gaze, though, wanting to fill his eyes with as much of her as he could while he could, even though she was blurry through a glaze of tears. As the door to the bus hissed shut and it began to move, he automatically moved down the center aisle, trying to keep even with Jemma outside, trying to keep her in sight; she too was moving along with him, staring up at him through the bus windows. When there was nowhere left for him to go, he pressed up against the glass of the back door and watched as Jemma took several steps after them, reaching out as if she could still touch him, bring him back; then, as she faded into the distance, he saw her legs give out. Both of her parents rushed to her side as she collapsed, and the last Fitz saw of her was her burying her face in her hands. Then the bus turned the corner and she was gone from his sight, gone from his life.


	13. Chapter 13

Fitz spent the entire bus ride to Missouri in something resembling a fugue state. He'd stayed at the back of the bus long after it had turned the corner, slumped against the door, until his mother had come to try and coax him into a seat. She'd let him have the window. He'd leaned his head against it, staring sightlessly at the landscape passing by outside, and didn't respond to any of her attempts at talking. Eventually she'd given up on that, but it hadn't stopped her from occasionally giving his hand a squeeze. She didn't know how to draw him out of his shell of grief, but she was still there for him nonetheless.

For his part, Fitz felt numb. There was a hollow, gaping hole in his chest where his heart had once been, and the rest of the world felt so far away, muted and foggy. Once the shock had worn off and reality had set in, he fully appreciated exactly what he had lost. What good did survival mean now, if he had to do it without Jemma? What did anything matter, anymore? The world was going to end. He knew there was only a small chance the Titan rockets would work; the comet would hit Earth and it would take two years for the dust to clear. While he sat safe, tucked away in a cave along with a million others, the rest of the planet would die. The world he would eventually come back to would bear no resemblance to one he had left.

He wondered what it said about him that, for him, all of it paled in comparison to having to live without Jemma. He could figure out how to live in a brand new world; he was sure of that. But he didn't think he could recover from losing her.

He thought he'd been so clever. He'd figured out a way around the system, made it work in his favor, and used the weight of his name to ensure the safety of those he cared about most. But the system had made a fool of him and forced an impossible decision on Jemma. He didn't blame her for choosing to stay, not really. He knew if their roles had been reversed, he would have been very hard-pressed to leave his mother. However, a tiny little voice within him whispered that logic would have won out, even above love. His mother would have wanted him to live, and he was nearly certain he would have been able to honor that wish. He would have chosen to go.

But what did Jemma's reasons matter, really? Which would have hurt worse, leaving her behind or forcing her to come, and ending up with a Jemma who resented him for it?

Her reasons didn't matter. Nothing mattered, he thought. Nothing mattered at all. He would never see Jemma again and he had that final glimpse of her, broken and sobbing, to torture him for the rest of his life.

He would force himself to go on, to put one foot in front of the other, to keep going, for his mother's sake. He just didn't think he would be happy ever again.

He glanced down at his phone, loosely held in one hand in his lap. He'd spent a lot of time on and off over the length of the trip with the texting app open, staring down at the cursor blinking in an empty message to Jemma. He'd wanted to say something, anything, to apologize or to tell her he loved her one last time, but the words wouldn't come and he couldn't summon the energy to tap anything out anyway. As it was, the silence on her end said more than whatever paltry words he could come up with. She probably didn't even _want_ to hear from him (though what was left of his rational mind disagreed-she had clearly been devastated by having to choose between him and her parents). So he worried-about where she was and what she was doing, if she was safe.

The battery on his phone had dwindled to a dangerously low level overnight so he'd left it mostly alone since then, but he kept it in his hand. Just in case it buzzed.

As the bus drove down the final stretch of road that would lead them to the Ark, Fitz saw that there was an enormous crowd gathered around the double row of tall chain-link fences topped with barbed wire, shouting and pushing to get in past the heavily-guarded open gate. A large contingent of armed soldiers only just managed to keep them back while still letting in the buses and trucks carrying in supplies and residents. It was chaos.

Fitz watched it all through a detached sort of haze. He knew it probably should have affected him more-these people had reached the end of the line and were hopeless, desperate for a way in, to survive-but perhaps his grief was so overwhelming, he was unable to feel anything else, or anything more.

The bus inched forward in line toward the gate, and he glanced ahead toward where several different varieties of animals and plants were being unloaded off of trucks and moved to a staging area near a large, open bay door. His chest hollowed out even more as he thought about how excited Jemma would have been to see it, despite the seriousness of their situation. She'd spent a good hour the previous week reading aloud to him the government's plans on housing and providing for the animal and plant life they were preserving, and expressing her hope that maybe she would get to work with them in some capacity.

He closed his eyes. She would never get the chance now.

Sighing, he reopened his eyes and focused back on the crush of people at the gate.

That was when he saw her.

She was standing, unnaturally still and calm compared to the angry fervor of the crowd around her, facing the bus instead of ahead toward the gate. She met his gaze with large, dark eyes, and it felt like a hundred punches to the stomach.

It was Jemma.

Fitz breathed in sharply through his nose, slapping a hand against the window as he twisted to look closer. Beside him, his mother looked over, curious at his sudden movement and the seeming end of his stupor, but he ignored her. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Or _not_ seeing. In the time it had taken him to blink in shock, she'd disappeared. He rocked back slightly on the bench seat, blinking again, then pressed back against the window. She wasn't there. He frantically scanned the crowd, certain he'd imagined her, because there was _no way_ she was there-

And suddenly there she was again, in a different spot than before. She didn't move or speak, she just stared up at him with an aching sadness in her eyes. Fitz recoiled from it. It almost felt like a judgment, as if she were whispering _you left me, you left me_. But what could he have done? Could he really have chosen to do the opposite of what he did, to let his mother go alone and stay behind with Jemma and her parents, facing certain death? Would Jemma have even let him make that choice?

He shook his head to clear it, and she was gone again. Well, that was that. He'd officially lost it; his grief had driven him spare and he was suffering a mental break. That was the only reasonable solution to why he was seeing Jemma in places she couldn't possibly be, and it didn't bode well for his future. He could see all of his days stretching out before him, walking the corridors of the Ark, followed by a ghost of a girl in jeans and a blue shirt. All because he'd chosen life over love.

 _You left me._ He really had chosen life over Jemma, hadn't he? Dying a martyr for love was all well and good in prose, but it didn't work that way in real life, not really. His survival instinct had been too strong. Now he was reaping the consequences of his own impossible decision.

But perhaps there was still another option.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed; he flinched, startled. It was probably the phone turning itself off because the battery had finally died, but he looked down at it anyway. With a jolt, he realized it was a text from Jemma, and his hands shook as he hastily swiped his thumb across the screen to open it.

 _[Jemma] I wanted you to have a better final memory of me, so here I am_

Fitz almost laughed. Almost. Instead it stuck in his throat and turned sour, the bitterness making his eyes sting.

 _[Jemma] You know the first law of thermodynamics?_

 _No energy in the universe is created, and none is destroyed_ , he thought. They'd learned it in their physics class the year before.

 _[Jemma] Remember it. This version of me won't last, but eventually what's left will go on to help create something new, and so will that thing, and on and on. I'll never truly be gone_

He gripped his phone tightly, trying to hold back tears. Of course Jemma would try to comfort him with science. She was probably trying to comfort herself as well.

 _[Jemma] There's so much more I want to say, but I can't. I'm sorry. Just remember me. Live and be happy, please. For me_

Fitz was so focused on her last words to him that he barely noticed as the bus pulled inside the gate and rolled to a stop, and didn't listen as a man in black fatigues boarded and made a short announcement. It was only when his mother made to stand that he looked around and saw that everyone was preparing to get off the bus.

"Orange 254," his mother muttered as she bent to edge her suitcase out from underneath their seat. "Orange 254. That's our section. Did you catch that, love?"

Fitz nodded automatically once, then looked back to his phone and Jemma's texts. At that moment, it gave one long, extended buzz before the screen went dark: the battery had finally died. He shook it in a panic, as if that would make it turn back on.

"Leo?" his mother asked, frowning at him. "Time to go, love. Let's get your things."

Swallowing back the breakdown he feared he was headed for, he pocketed his phone, stood, and retrieved his own suitcase and backpack. Then he wheeled it down the aisle. Once down the stairs and into the late morning sunshine, he followed his mother and the other people from their bus toward a set of double doors set into the side of a large concrete wall.

He walked in a daze, but it felt different this time. He was no longer paralyzed with grief; rather, his mind was working furiously, doing the math, trying to name and quantify all the variables that he could. The Ark loomed in front of him with a terrible finality, and he knew that if he stepped through those doors, Jemma would be truly lost to him forever.

There was still the other option. He didn't have to survive off one last memory of Jemma; they could still make all the memories they wanted, together, for the rest of their lives.

His steps slowed, and he turned to look back at the fence. She was there again, just to the left of the gate, still staring calmly at him. This time he could hear her voice, clear as day, as if she were standing right next to him. _You can still turn back. There's still time._

Fitz squeezed his eyes shut and hung his head, turning back to face the Ark. One breath in, one breath out, and he opened his eyes and looked back up as the rest of his grief faded away, replaced by a resolve that was solidifying into something concrete and immovable.

Ahead of him, his mother noticed he was no longer keeping up with her, and turned to look back at him. "Leo?"

He swallowed. "I'm-I'm not coming, Mum."

Something like despair washed over her face, and she rushed back to him, dragging her suitcase behind her. "Leo, stop with that nonsense! You come with me, right now."

He felt tears welling up in his eyes again, but he refused to be dissuaded. "I have to go back for them," he said, swallowing. "For Jemma."

His mother shook her head. "Leo-"

"Mum, I have to. I can't-"

She closed her eyes, much the same way he had, and let go of her suitcase, stepping forward to engulf him in a hug. "I know, love. I know." Then she blew out a breath and squeezed him even tighter. "Bleeding Christ, Leo, just-you take care of yourself, okay? Come back to me."

Fitz allowed himself the briefest of moments to soak in his mother's embrace, to take strength from her, before he gently disentangled himself. "I will, Mum. I promise." He pressed a hand to her cheek, managing a wan smile for her, before handing off his backpack and nudging his own suitcase forward. "I'm sorry, but I can't take-"

"I've got it, love, don't worry." His mother brushed a tear away from her eye, then shouldered his backpack and grabbed hold of both their suitcases. "Best hurry now, you haven't got much time." She forced a smile of her own.

He nodded. "I know. And I promise, I _will_ be back."

Then Fitz turned and headed back to the gate, one lone person threading his way against the tide of people moving forward. He didn't meet any resistance at the fence aside from some very puzzled questions and looks about what exactly it was he was doing-the guards were only supposed to keep people out, not worry about them leaving-and before long, he'd worked his way free of the mayhem and to the side of the road leading away from the Ark. Taking one last look back, he saw Jemma again, standing at the edge of the crowd.

This time, she was smiling.


	14. Chapter 14

A battered old truck rumbled down a lonely stretch of rural highway in the dead of night, its headlights barely piercing the dark around it. The road had been empty for several miles; any other vehicles it encountered were headed in the opposite direction. Back in the large, open bed of the truck no fewer than fifteen people were crammed in, all with their own reasons for traveling like a band of refugees. There wasn't much chatter among them. It was difficult to hear over the sound of the truck's engine, and what little they could hear was dedicated to listening to the wireless radio that one of their fellow passengers held.

Fitz sat among them, his back against the wheel well and his knees tucked under his chin. The jostling of the truck as it made its way down the road was almost soothing, lulling him into a quiet, contemplative state that wasn't too unlike the numb daze he'd been trapped in on the way to the Ark. However, instead of being consumed with grief, he was carefully going over his plan in his head, calculating the distances left and formulating ideas for what he would do when he got back to Jemma and her parents.

He estimated they were somewhere in Kentucky, about halfway to Richmond, and-if he could convince the driver to go directly to their neighborhood-he would be there sometime late in the morning. He would be cutting it close, timewise, but he was still confident that they could be well on their way back to Missouri by the time the comet was estimated to hit. The remainder of the journey post-comet might get scary, but they would make it.

The truck hit a particularly nasty pothole; everyone riding in the back grabbed on to something or someone to keep their balance as the road evened back out. The man holding the wireless radio in his lap gripped onto it tightly so he didn't drop it, then adjusted the dial slightly as a burst of static shot through the reception.

"We have now confirmed the launch of all the Titan missiles from their positions in North Dakota and Wyoming," the broadcaster was saying. "The comets are now approximately fourteen hours outside of Earth's atmosphere, and we are told it should take these missiles less than twenty minutes to reach their target."

Fitz lifted his head to look up. Far above them, both pieces of the comet were clearly and separately visible in the night sky, looming large and looking almost serene against a glittering backdrop of stars. Earlier, the radio broadcaster had said that they'd divided up the name of the comet accordingly. The smaller chunk, scheduled to hit first, had been designated _Fitz_ while the larger chunk became _Hall_. Breathing out a slow sigh, he let his eyes linger on the part named after him, allowing himself to forget the dread and the fear for a moment to appreciate the wonder of it. Up there was a comet, closer to Earth than any other comet in recorded history, and it was beautiful. The opportunities for science were boundless. Fitz was sure that despite the threat, there were astronomers and physicists all across the world still at their posts, collecting data and photographs and analyzing them for future use. He wondered if Jemma was awake back home, watching the news and looking out the window to see the very same sight that he saw.

He wondered what his fellow passengers would say if they knew the half of the comet's namesake was in their company.

Probably, they would ask him what the hell he was doing running away from the Ark. Only a madman would leave guaranteed safety now.

 _I'm going back for the love of my life_ , he'd say. _I'm going back for Jemma._

They might not understand, but it didn't matter. No one and nothing could dissuade him from the path he'd put himself on.

Up above him, one of the men sitting on the steel storage box at the head of the truck bed rapped on the window at the back of the cabin. After a moment, the woman riding in the passenger seat turned to get it pulled open. The man outside ducked down so she could hear him over the truck's engine.

"They just launched the missiles," he said. "Just thought I'd let you guys know in case you wanted to listen."

A few minutes later, they pulled off to the side of the road on a dusty shoulder bordering a farm. Everyone in the back took the opportunity to get out and stand and stretch their legs, talking quietly amongst each other. The owner of the radio set it on the edge of the truck's back gate. Fitz briefly questioned the wisdom of stopping their journey for anything, but this was humanity's final stand. He didn't blame anyone for wanting to give the radio their undivided attention.

For several long minutes, they listened in silence. Fitz kept looking back up to the sky, unsure of what he should be looking for. What would happen if the missiles were successful? Would the comets simply disappear from sight? Would there be a visible explosion?

When the comets remained in the sky and the broadcast was interrupted with a message from the President, Fitz felt his stomach sink. He immediately knew that they were doomed.

"Our missiles have failed," President Beck said. He sounded incredibly weary, the weight of terrible news on his shoulders. "The comets are still headed for Earth…and there's nothing we can do to stop them. So, this is it. The world does go on, but it will not go on for everyone."

The man standing next to him swore quietly under his breath, crossing his arms over his chest. One the other side of the group, a woman pulled her young child closer to her, bringing one hand up to cover her mouth.

"We have now been able to calculate the comets' final trajectories and we have determined where they're going to strike," the President continued. "The smaller of the two comets, Fitz, will hit first, somewhere along the Atlantic seaboard-probably in the waters off the coast of Cape Hatteras, in just under twelve hours, at 4:35pm Eastern Daylight Time. The impact of the comet is going to be…" He paused. "Well, disastrous. There will be a very large tidal wave moving quickly through the Atlantic Ocean. It will be one hundred feet high, traveling at eleven hundred miles an hour. That's faster than the speed of sound. As the wave reaches shallow water it's going to slow down, but the wave height, depending on the depth of the shelf off the coast, will be anywhere from one thousand to thirty-five hundred feet high."

Fitz took a deep breath against the old familiar panic starting to churn in his gut. To combat it, he started running the new numbers through his head. In his periphery, he saw the driver of the truck lean in to his partner, talking in quiet, urgent tones.

"Where the land is flat, the wave will wash inland six hundred to seven hundred miles. The wave will hit our nation's capitol forty minutes after impact. New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia…all will be destroyed. If you have any means of getting away from the path of this wave, leave now."

Someone else in their group had approached the driver, joining their conversation. Fitz kept an eye on them, certain he knew what they were saying.

"The impact of the larger comet will be nothing less than an extinction-level event. It will strike land in western Canada, three hours after Fitz. Within a week, the skies will be dark with dust from the impact, and they will stay dark for two years. All plant life will be dead within…four weeks. Animal life within…a few months." President Beck went quiet for a moment. "So, that's it. Good luck to us all."

As the radio went silent, the little group gathered stood quietly for a moment as everything sank in. Fitz could hear someone crying softly. Finally, the driver of the truck cleared his throat and stepped forward, turning to face everyone.

"Okay, folks," he said, "here's how it's going to go. I know we've been heading east, but you heard him. That tidal wave's going to be a death sentence if we keep going the way we were. Now...I know we all have places we want to be. Maybe that's changed now. But I'm making the decision to turn around. We're going to head back toward Lexington. It's the closest major city and we can find shelter there. Hopefully."

Fitz clenched his fists as a helpless sort of horror lodged in his throat, his plans crumbling to ruin in his head. Around him, most of his fellow riders were nodding, murmuring their assent, but he saw a few who looked just as unhappy as he felt.

"I-I have to get back to Richmond," he said desperately. "I _can't_ turn back, I _have_ to get to Richmond."

"And I have to get to Washington," said a lanky, middle-aged man three people to his right. "Non-negotiable."

The driver gave a tight, apologetic smile. "I'm sorry. I don't know what else to tell you, except good luck and godspeed."

The other man swore, then caught Fitz's eye as everyone moved to get back on the truck. He swallowed, then nodded.

In the end, four of them continued on eastward. The others wished them the best of luck, but it was clear from the looks on their faces that they believed they were heading for certain death. Fitz and his new companions watched the truck recede into the distance for a moment, and he tried not to let his new panic and dread swallow him whole.

He knew his situation was grim now, and that Jemma's was even worse. Cape Hatteras wasn't far from the Virginia border, and Richmond was only two hours by car from the coastline. It wouldn't take the tidal wave very long to reach there at all. Additionally, he was certain that the entire eastern seaboard of the country was now undergoing a mass panic as everyone rushed to evacuate. Even worse, with his cell phone dead he had no way of getting in contact with Jemma in order to know what she and her family were doing.

Stranded in the middle of nowhere with no transportation and no communication, all Fitz had left was his determination. He could only hope that it would be enough to carry him back to Jemma before time ran out.

-:-

"So what are you heading back for?"

Fitz looked up, breaking his focus on the passage of asphalt beneath his feet. They'd been walking for nearly an hour by the light of the moon, him and his three companions, with very little said between them. As the night edged closer and closer to dawn, they'd met an increasing number of cars on the road, but most of them were heading west. The few that were traveling east had refused to pick them up, the drivers saying they had no plans to go _that_ far toward the ocean.

It was the middle-aged man who had spoken, the one who had said he needed to get to Washington. He'd introduced himself as Ronald shortly after the truck had left them behind. The others were Michael, a stout young man from Pennsylvania, and Meredith, a college student who was also headed to Richmond. Fitz had carefully avoided giving his own name, unsure he wanted them to know who he really was. They hadn't pressed.

He thought briefly of Jemma, a brief plume of worry tugging at his heart. "I, uh...I'm going back for my-my wife."

"Your wife?" Ronald didn't bother to hide his surprise. "Aren't you a little young to be married?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, but...you know." _Desperate times call for desperate measures._

On his other side, Meredith adjusted the straps of her backpack. "Why isn't she already with you?"

Fitz considered giving them some sort of vague redirect, anything that wouldn't make him out to be a coward or an asshole for leaving Jemma behind. But in the end, what did their opinion matter? The world was going to end later in the day. Appearances didn't mean anything anymore. He sighed. "I...I was at the Ark, actually. But she didn't want to leave her parents."

Ronald whistled. "You got in at the Ark and you _left_? You must really love your wife."

"She's my wife," Fitz replied, as if that explained everything. To him, it did.

Ronald smiled faintly, scratching at his arm. "I can't judge. I'm going back for my kids."

"Oh?" Meredith asked, perking up. "How old are they?"

"About your age, probably," he said. "My oldest is a junior in college, and his sister is a freshman. They're both at Georgetown."

Meredith nodded, absorbing that information, and they fell into silence again. A few minutes later, Ronald looked at him again.

"So your number got pulled in the lottery?" he asked.

Fitz shook his head. "No, uh...I was pre-selected."

"What?" Meredith said. He looked over to see that she was frowning. "But you're just a kid."

He fought the urge to bristle-he couldn't have been much younger than her-before sighing. "Yeah, well...I kind of discovered that." He pointed up towards the sky where Fitz and Hall shone brightly.

"You're shitting me." It was the first time Michael had spoken since he'd introduced himself. "You're Leo Fitz?"

Ronald laughed, sounding faintly surprised. "Wow. We've had a national hero here with us the whole time."

Fitz scoffed, looking back down. "I'm not a hero."

-:-

Eventually, they found someone with a car who was just as crazy as they were, someone willing to drive them further into dangerous territory against the tide of people trying to escape. They quickly found it was easier to take back roads, as all major interstates and highways had been redirected to flow one way: out.

They parted ways on the outskirts of Richmond. Their driver was able to take Meredith directly to her destination, but wasn't willing to brave the crush of traffic going further into town. Instead, he turned north to take Ronald and Michael to Washington. Fitz was left to walk on foot again, forcing himself not to run so he wouldn't overheat and tire himself out. He took note of how high the sun had risen in the sky with despair, but tried to stay focused on reaching Jemma. If he stopped long enough to think about how little time remained, he might lose all the hope he had left.

Staying alert kept his mind sufficiently occupied. He had to carefully weave in and out of heavy traffic as he made his way toward home; he received more than a few curious glances from drivers along the way, wondering why someone was walking further into the city rather than driving out. Finally, he was granted a boon in the form of a bicycle lying abandoned on a trash heap. He wasted no time in getting it upright and leaping on it, pedaling furiously in the direction of his neighborhood.

When he got there, it looked like something out of a warzone. The streets were abandoned, garbage scattered across them in all directions, and most of the houses he passed had their doors and garages left wide open. Fitz felt his heart sink as he approached Jemma's house, seeing that it looked much the same, and that their family sedan was missing from the driveway. He steered his bicycle onto the grass of their lawn at full speed before ditching it just as he hit the front walk. "Jemma?" he shouted, running straight into their house. Shock and fear hit him as he saw that the living room had been ransacked, furniture shoved aside and overturned. He pushed past the couch to run to the staircase, looking up. "Jemma!"

But there was no answer. Jemma and her parents were gone.

Fitz let out a cry of panic as he turned in place, pressing his fingertips to his temples. _Think._ He had to think. Jemma was gone, and all he had was a bicycle and a rapidly-dwindling time frame. Where would they have gone? How would he find them? Would he even be able to get there in time?

Sucking in a deep breath, he opened his eyes and ran for the garage, hoping against hope that it was still there. He nearly cried in relief when he saw that it was: the shiny white motorcycle that Mr. Simmons had purchased shortly before the comet was announced to the public. He could still hear the older man's words as they'd stood in the garage one night, looking it over.

 _Who do I think I'm going to be, buying this?_

Fitz had laughed before trying to reassure him that even if it _was_ a mid-life crisis thing, it was still a very nice bike. Now, he'd never been more thankful for an impulse purchase in his life, even if it wasn't his own. He was doubly lucky that looters hadn't managed to make off with it either-they had obviously been deterred by the thick chains lashed around the motorcycle, preventing the wheels from turning. Luckily, Fitz knew where Jemma's father had hidden the key.

He picked up the mason jar full of nails, nuts, and bolts, and upended it onto the concrete floor, then dropped to his knees to sift through the mess with frantic, shaking hands. "Come on, come on, where are you," he muttered. A flash of yellow metal hit his eyes. "Ah-there!"

Snatching them up, he rushed over to the motorcycle and made quick work of the lock on the chains, hurrying to pull them off and away. Once they were clear, he reached for the helmet sitting on the bench next to it and jammed it down on his head, not bothering with the latch beneath his chin. Then he swung his leg over the seat as he switched the ignition on. He'd never ridden on, much less driven, a motorcycle before today, but there was no time like the present to learn. Giving the gas a testing tap, he nodded once to himself before slamming his foot down and speeding out of the garage and onto the street, heading back the way he'd came.

Logic suggested that Jemma and her parents had likely left as soon as they could after the President's call to evacuate. They'd already had their essentials packed for the trip to the Ark, so it was also likely that they'd never unpacked and would have been able to load their car quickly. After that, they would have headed for the interstate, the most direct route out of the city and into the mountains. They'd had several hours' lead on him, and Fitz frowned as he considered that now, it might be impossible for him to catch up with them. The lack of any way to contact them decreased his odds even further.

But as he drove closer to the interstate, he began to realize that perhaps Jemma and her parents hadn't gotten as far as he'd initially feared. Traffic had slowed down drastically, crawling along at a snail's pace. The roads were clogged with more cars than they could handle, and after several impatient minutes, Fitz decided to put the small size of the motorcycle to use by pushing forward, weaving in and out of the larger cars around him.

He heard it before he saw it. Car horns, hundreds of them, all blaring furiously as he approached the overpass that went over the interstate. When he reached the top of the on-ramp, his heart froze in utter despair at what he saw.

It was a complete and total gridlock, vehicles swamping both sides of the highway and even filling the median, all of them unmoving, stretching out into the distance as far as the eye could see.


	15. Chapter 15

Fitz had no idea how he was supposed to find Jemma in the traffic jam from hell that lay spread out ahead of him. There were thousands, _thousands_ of cars on the interstate, and there was no way he would be able to search through all of them in the time he had left. His mission had just been downgraded from _highly unlikely_ to _impossible_.

He half-expected despair to overtake him then, for the futility of it all to drown him in his own failure. But he hadn't failed-not yet. There was still time, even if it was only time enough to find Jemma and hold her before the end came. He would find her, or he would die trying.

His jaw set with renewed determination, he revved the engine of the motorcycle before cutting across to drive down the side of the on-ramp onto the interstate, passing by all of the cars mired hopelessly in the gridlock.

It was chaos. Any vehicle that could gain even an inch of advancement was doing so, no matter how they had to move; the lines demarcating individual lanes were purely decorational. Everywhere Fitz looked, there were cars stalling out, overheating in the hot August sun, running out of gas. After five minutes, he'd lost count of how many minor fender-benders he'd seen. He almost fell victim to several himself, having to slam on his brakes or jerk the front wheel of the motorcycle to one side to avoid hitting someone, or being hit. The blaring of car horns and alarms and drivers shouting and screaming at each other added a layer of frustration over it all. It wasn't long before the constant shrill noise had given Fitz a pounding headache, but he grit his teeth and pushed on.

He wove through traffic as slowly as he dared, aiming for a vague zig-zag pattern down the road, constantly looking from side to side in hopes of seeing the Simmonses' red sedan. Several times he caught a flash of a door or back bumper that looked familiar and he would speed as fast as he could toward it, his hope sparking, only to have it turn out to be a false lead.

An hour into his search, Fitz cursed to himself after another near-collision with a van and readjusted his grip on the handlebars. This far into the gridlock, several other motorcycles and dirtbikes had joined him in winding their way through the morass; on the side of the road, many people had given up and were simply walking. He even saw one person on a skateboard. Sucking in a breath, he drove around a truck that had smoke gushing from its hood, and coughed as he got a blast of it full in the face. His eyes streaming with the sudden sting, he swiped his hand across his face-and nearly choked as the smoke cleared and he saw a red sedan, right in front of him. There were two people visible in the front seats with a third in the back. They all had dark hair.

"Jemma?" he called, driving forward. "Jemma!"

But when he drew up alongside the car, the people who looked out of the windows at him in confusion weren't the Simmonses.

His hope crashed again, and this time the sting pricking at his eyes wasn't smoke. His face flushing, he looked away and swallowed his disappointment before pushing on, determined not to give up.

But as he cut a path through the vehicles ahead of him, he didn't see the other red sedan that was partially hidden by a large delivery truck. Inside it, Mr. Simmons startled sharply as Fitz zipped past them, motorcycle tires sliding on loose gravel. He pointed urgently. "Jemma, look!"

Jemma's eyes widened, and without thinking she lunged forward over the center console to jam the heel of her hand down on the steering wheel, blowing the horn. "Fitz!"

He couldn't distinguish their horn from the dozens of others blowing around them, though, and he kept driving without slowing down. Panic shooting through her, Jemma leaned back and rushed to open the door. "Fitz!" she screamed as she tumbled out, then moved to climb up onto the hood and then the roof of the car, waving her arms frantically. "Fitz! Leo Fitz! _Fitz!_ "

Fitz hit the brakes hard as he heard his name being called, his heart leaping into his chest. If he was imagining things again, if this was another dead end, he didn't think he could take it. But he twisted around to look back, and there she was, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, jumping up and down on the roof of her parents' car, shouting his name.

Dizziness and incredible relief slammed into him at the same time, and his vision swam as he fumbled to get the motorcycle's kickstand down. Then he was taking his helmet off and running and Jemma was climbing down from the top of the car and running too.

"Fitz!" Jemma threw herself straight into his arms and he caught her around the waist, the force of their embrace spinning them around.

"Oh my god-" He pulled back just enough to reach up and cup her cheeks, push her hair back, run his shaking hands over her shoulders and down her arms and back up to her face just to prove to himself that she was real. He'd found her. He'd _found_ her.

Jemma's hands were twisted into his shirt, right over where his heart was hammering in his chest. "What are you _doing_ here-"

"I had to come back for you, I had to, I couldn't live knowing-"

She let out a sob as she wrapped her arms around his neck again, and Fitz pulled her to him, holding her tight. There was no way he could save them from the comet now; there was no way for them to get out of the traffic jam they were stuck in. But he had found Jemma, and a strange sort of peace washed over him. They were going to die, but they had each other now, together again until the end.

That sense of peace disappeared when he felt a hand plant itself between his shoulder blades, pushing both him and Jemma back toward the motorcycle. He let her go and looked up to see that her parents had gotten out of the car, and Mr. Simmons had a grim, resolute look on his face.

"You don't have any time," he said. "You have to go, _now_."

"What?" Jemma and Fitz said it together, but Fitz rushed to add, "No, there's no way for all of us to-I can't leave-"

"Yes, you can," Mr. Simmons said, and it was a terrible replay of the night of the evacuation. "I'm telling you to, you have to take her and go." Fitz stared as denial hit him square in the chest, but when Mr. Simmons pushed him toward the motorcycle again, he nodded dumbly and turned to swing his leg back over the seat, grabbing the handlebars as he went.

Behind him, Jemma began to sob. "Dad? Daddy, what are you doing?"

"You're going with him," Mr. Simmons said, his voice thick with emotion as he guided her to sit behind Fitz. On her other side, Mrs. Simmons put the extra helmet on Jemma's head and tenderly pulled her hair out of the way of the chin strap.

"What?" Jemma cried hysterically. "No, no, no no, I don't want to go without you!"

"Please, love, no arguments, you're going with him."

Fitz felt his heart crack in two as Jemma continued to beg and plead, and he twisted around to look at her, wishing he could do anything to change what was happening. Tears were streaming unchecked down her face, and her mother was crying, too, as she picked up Fitz's helmet. Coming up beside him, she handed it to him. "Put this back on," she said, and swiftly kissed his cheek. "Take care of my Jemma for me."

He nodded again, too heartbroken and stunned for words, and kicked up the kickstand.

"Mum?" Jemma grabbed on to her mother's arm, pulling her back, and she shook her head as her father bent down to press kisses to both her cheeks.

"Sweetheart, love, listen to me, you have to let go." Mrs. Simmons took Jemma's hands and placed them on Fitz's hips. "Hold on to Leo, okay? Hold on tight. I love you."

"I love you," Mr. Simmons echoed, and squeezed Fitz's shoulder, hard. "Get out of here, Leo, go, get to high ground-"

Breathing in, Fitz looked back at them one more time before he stepped down on the gas pedal and peeled away. Then he kept his eyes focused firmly ahead, rapidly blinking back his own tears, and tried not to think about Jemma's arms wrapped around his waist, the front of her helmet pressing into his back, and the feeling of her entire body shaking with sobs.

-:-

They were far away from the city and well into the foothills by the time the first chunk of the comet hit.

Having left the gridlock far behind, Fitz was driving down the highway at top speed, still winding in and out of traffic, when he heard a deafening explosion. Behind him, he felt Jemma flinch and shift to look up. She'd barely moved at all in the hour or so since they'd left her parents, only adjusting her arms slightly to cling tighter to him. Now, he felt her fingers twist into his shirt again as her body tensed.

Daring a glance up and to the side, he saw an enormous fireball blazing across the sky, a wide smoke trail fanning out behind it. Fitz, his namesake, had finally entered the atmosphere, and Earth's reckoning was at hand. Fitz swallowed as he looked forward again. He recalled President Beck's timetable of the tidal wave that would result from the impact; he'd estimated forty minutes before the wave hit Washington, D.C. Richmond was roughly due south of the capitol and thus just as far inland. They were barely an hour west now, which didn't give them much more of a head start. They were running out of time.

Fitz pressed harder on the gas pedal, speeding up as fast as he dared. As soon as he saw exit signs pointing toward the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, he abandoned the interstate for a smaller state highway that would lead them directly up into the mountains. They weren't alone: many people seemed to have the same idea as him, and the narrower road became clogged again, forcing Fitz to slow down and navigate carefully.

He kept driving until he noticed that people had started to abandon their vehicles and were running into the hills that bordered the road. Looking up, he saw that they were close to what looked like the highest peak in the area-or, at least, the highest peak they would be able to reach before the wave caught up with them. Praying it was enough, he slowed down just enough to make a turn off the road and into the underbrush. "Hold on!" he shouted back over his shoulder, and felt Jemma readjust her grip on him again.

Then they were driving fast over dirt and stone, the motorcycle wobbling wildly on the uneven ground. Fitz grit his teeth and gripped the handlebars tighter, thanking everything he could think of that the motorcycle was built more like a dirt bike rather than a sleek, fancy import; anything larger and he didn't think he could manage to control it. Jemma's arms clutched tight around his waist, her knees digging into his thighs, her chin on the edge of his shoulder. He could hear a vague sort of thundering roar building in the distance, but tried not to think about it, and didn't dare look behind him.

On and on they drove, speeding around people running on foot, ducking low-hanging tree branches. There were other motorcycles, too, the buzz of their engines audible even over the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. The higher they went, the steeper the incline became, until they were forced to abandon the bike. It was just as well-the needle on the gas gauge was hovering over empty, and Fitz didn't know how much farther they could have gone.

He let the motorcycle coast to a stop, then jumped off of it and pulled his helmet off. As soon as Jemma had done the same, he let the bike fall over onto its side. There was nothing else to do but just leave it. He reached out for Jemma's hand. "Come on, we have to go," he said urgently as she grabbed his hand, eyes wide. "We have to keep going."

They ran. They ran until their feet ached and their lungs burned, until their grip on each other started to slip through sweat-slicked hands. They ran even as they stumbled and fell, only pausing long enough to help each other back to their feet. They ran far past what they thought they were capable of, their breaths ragged with exhaustion. They grabbed onto rock and bark to pull themselves higher as their path grew ever more vertical, survival the only thing they could think of. The entire time, that terrible roar kept growing and growing, getting closer, unlike anything Fitz had ever heard in his life.

When the end was in sight-when he could see the top of the ridge, bare of trees-Fitz redoubled his grip on Jemma's hand. "We're almost there," he panted. "Almost there."

There were hands waiting to pull them up the last few meters, their feet sliding on the steep slope. Breathing out his thanks, Fitz turned to help haul Jemma up the final stretch. As soon as they both stood on relatively even ground, he pulled her back a few steps, their chests heaving, and turned to look back the way they had come.

Far below them, the wave was cresting one of the lower ridges they had crossed not that long ago, clearly losing steam. He closed his eyes and let out a harsh breath of relief. They'd made it. There was no danger of the water being able to push as high as they were now. They'd outrun the wave.

His relief was short-lived, however, because then he remembered that the second chunk of the comet, Hall, had yet to hit. If they didn't formulate a plan soon, the dust kicked up from the second impact would plunge the world into darkness before they could even hope to get back to the Ark. But before he could catch his breath and turn his attention to that, there was another loud explosion, one that seemed to rattle the very ground beneath their feet.

They looked up just in time to see a blinding white flash of light in the sky. Around them, several of the other survivors cried out in shock, and Fitz and Jemma both threw up an arm to shield their eyes. When the light faded, there was nothing left of Hall-nothing except millions of tiny pieces of rock flying through space, turning into sparks zipping through the sky as they hit the atmosphere.

"Bloody hell," Fitz muttered in disbelief. Behind him, someone let out a whoop of joy. That was followed by another, and then another, until everyone on the ridge was cheering. After a moment, he turned to look at Jemma. She was staring up at the sky, her face streaked with dirt and blood from a cut on her forehead, still breathless from running. He squeezed his arm around her shoulders, and she looked down at him. He took her in, still marveling that she was even with him, and gave her a tentative smile. The corners of her mouth twitched in a pale imitation of his; she couldn't smile back. But she turned into him without a word, resting her forehead on his and closing her eyes as her hands came up to rest flat on his chest. He closed his eyes too, shifting to hold her by her shoulders, and let himself take in the feel of her in his arms, the reality of her presence beside him.

They were going to live.


	16. Chapter 16

It took Fitz and Jemma three days to get back to Missouri.

They stood on top of the mountain ridge with the other survivors for a few hours, resting and trying to get their bearings-trying to comprehend how in the hell they'd managed to live. Once the shock wore off, someone suggested trying to get in contact with someone-anyone-in a position to provide aid. But if cell phone reception in the mountains had been shoddy before, it was doubly so in the wake of the comet's wave. Fitz, armed with Jemma's phone, grouped with some of the others to see who could get news on what exactly had happened to cause Hall to explode at the last minute, and just how bad the damage was from his own namesake.

Jemma had found a rock to sit on a few feet away. She hadn't said anything since they'd left her parents hours before, and Fitz was getting worried. He kept looking over at her as he worked on getting phone reception; her face was almost expressionless, tilted to the sky to watch the light show as the last of Hall's fragments burned up in the atmosphere. He had no way of knowing what she was thinking, but he had a very good guess. She was thinking about her parents.

As soon as they got their situation sorted, Fitz promised himself that he was going to do everything he could to be there for her. It was so like Jemma to close herself off when she was upset, and he knew that _upset_ was a vast understatement at the moment. She was going to need something steady to lean on, and he was determined to be that for her.

When they finally managed to find a signal and get news, it was coming out of Los Angeles-not a surprise, since the infrastructure of the East was likely in shambles. They learned that nearly every major city on the Eastern seaboard and some in western Europe had likely been destroyed by the wave, New York City and Boston chief among them. The capitol had taken a severe hit as well. Millions were dead. They also learned that the _Messiah_ had made it back to Earth along with the comet, and that the crew had sacrificed themselves in a final bid to stop the larger of the two fragments from hitting. Obviously, they'd been successful.

The overwhelming relief that swept through him at the realization that the world was _not_ going to end was so strong that he grew dizzy, and he had to sit down next to Jemma on her rock. She still didn't speak when he told her the good news, but she smiled very faintly and leaned her head on his shoulder. All he could do in return was wrap an arm around her and tuck her into his side for a moment.

Eventually, their group on the ridge decided to make their way down the far side of the mountain and back toward the state highway closest to them, hoping to find more survivors and transportation. It was slow going, being on foot and with some members of the group having been injured, but they eventually made it to the road with little trouble. Jemma tightly gripped Fitz's hand at every available opportunity, and once they were back on level ground she didn't stray from his side. It was only when they found someone with a truck willing to drive them in the general direction of Missouri that she finally spoke.

"Thank you," she said, and he was barely able to hear her over the rumble of the truck's engine and the whipping of the wind around them.

"What for?" he asked.

She reached out then to pull his left hand into her lap, squeezing it between both of hers. "For coming back for me." Then she leaned her head on his shoulder again, her fingers brushing over the ring on his fourth finger and lingering there. He saw that she was wearing her own ring again, too.

"Oh." He didn't really know what to say to that, how to feel-she sounded so serious, and for some reason that made him uncomfortable-so he shrugged lightly, trying to play it off. "Not a problem," he said at length, and promptly ruined his attempt at being casual by turning his face to brush a kiss against her forehead. Thankfully, she didn't seem to mind. She only squeezed his hand tighter and leaned more into him.

From there, they struggled to make it back to the Ark. He'd bartered everything he had on him getting back to Virginia, and he'd left his ID with his mother, so no one believed him when he said that he was, in fact, _the_ Leo Fitz. With nothing to trade and no way to bribe people aside from their combined charm-Jemma still wasn't saying much-it was hard finding drivers willing to take them to rural Missouri, as everyone wanted to head for a major city. Past that, no one was willing to deal with the security detail surrounding the Ark. They were forced to go the last five miles on foot.

The fence and gates in front of the entrance to the caves were deserted. It was a stark contrast to the organized chaos Fitz had seen when he first arrived. At a loss for what to do, he and Jemma located what looked to be a security camera on one end of the fence and tried to makes as much noise and commotion as they could until they got a response. That response was a small security and defense team that burst out from a smaller door to the right of one of the bigger vehicle bays, guns up and aimed right at them.

What followed was a tense back-and-forth where Fitz tried to explain who he was, who Jemma was, and that they had both been pre-selected for the caves but, obviously, had failed to show up on time with their official escort. Without any identifying papers to prove it, the soldiers were even less inclined to believe him than the people they'd met on the road. It took a lot of arguing and pleading, but finally Fitz convinced them to get in contact with his mother. She had his photo ID and marriage license, he explained, and she could vouch for both of them.

It took twenty uncomfortable minutes for them to locate his mother and for her to find the appropriate paperwork. The soldiers no longer pointed their guns directly at the pair, but their fingers were resting on the triggers, so Fitz felt it best to keep quiet and play along. Jemma surprised him by coming up next to him and taking his hand, lacing her fingers with his and squeezing tightly. Together, they stood and tried not to look as tired and dirty and bedraggled as they actually were, until the call came in over the radio that everything checked out and they were allowed inside.

They were taken directly to the orientation room for Orange 254, where they found his mother waiting. She openly wept upon seeing them, sweeping first Fitz and then Jemma into a crushing hug that left them both flustered. She stayed with them while they were brought food to eat, as they watched the presentation that was their introduction on what to expect from their new home, and as they were both given a small box with some essential items in them. Then she went to fetch Fitz's backpack and suitcase from her bunk while he and Jemma were shown to theirs.

The room they had been assigned was typical to the one given to all married, childless couples: small, just big enough to house their furniture-a double bed, dresser, desk, two armchairs, and shelves-and very Spartan in appearance. It didn't look uncomfortable, though; Fitz was gratified to feel a little give in the mattress when he pressed a hand to it. Additionally, they'd been supplied with a small flatscreen display mounted to the wall above the desk.

Fitz started unpacking his suitcase, folding away the clothes he'd been able to bring into the dresser, and trying not to think too much about the fact that Jemma had nothing of her own to unpack. Fitz's mother had told him that since Jemma had arrived with nothing, she was going to start up a collection from the women in their section, to get her at least a few changes of clothes to start off with. Jemma had given a small smile in reply, gently squeezing the older woman's arm. Currently, she had silently taken on the job of unloading his backpack, storing the few personal mementos, books, and knick-knacks he'd brought on the shelf on the far side of the desk.

Once he'd emptied his suitcase, Fitz stood up and looked around the room. There was really nowhere to store the suitcase, so after a moment of hesitation he shoved it underneath the bed. Then he straightened up with a sigh.

"I'm...um. I'm going to go have a shower," he said, picking up the clean pajamas he'd laid out, along with the toiletries from the box he'd been given. "Because...yeah. I think there's enough time for it before lights out."

They'd learned during orientation that most of the lights in the Ark were turned off between the hours of 11:00pm and 6:00am in order to help reduce energy output. The clock on the nightstand by the bed said it was 10:30; if he hurried, he could be done and back well before curfew.

Jemma turned away from the shelves to store his now-empty backpack underneath the bed as well, giving him the faintest of smiles as she did so. "Okay," she murmured. "I'll be right behind you. Your mum said she'd at least have something for me to wear to sleep tonight, so I'm going to stop by her bunk on the way."

"Right." Fitz paused as she went back to the desk to rummage through her own box of toiletries. He was suddenly hesitant to leave her. He knew that Jemma was perfectly capable of taking care of herself and didn't need him hovering about like a mother hen, but after the stress of everything they'd been through, he was almost loathe to let her out of his sight. It was irrational, but he still feared that if they were separated again, this time he wouldn't be able to find her. Judging by the sudden frown on her face, Jemma felt the same way.

She took her bag of toiletries out of the box and turned back to him, swallowing thickly. "I'll be fine," she said, staring at a spot somewhere near the middle of his chest. "I promise."

"Yeah. I know. Um." He sucked in a breath and nodded before forcing himself to step away from her. "I'll just-I'll be back." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the door before turning to leave, only just stopping himself from saying _be careful_.

He took three wrong turns before finally finding the communal bathrooms. Despite the late hour, there were still a few other men there; he nodded his head awkwardly in greeting before ducking into a shower stall and yanking the curtain closed behind him. Then he twisted the tap before quickly shucking off his clothes.

The water wasn't piping hot, but Fitz wasn't going to be picky. It felt almost sinfully good standing beneath the spray, washing away all the dirt and grime of the previous four days, letting the water pressure ease the tension out of his back and shoulders. It made the cuts and abrasions he'd sustained during their escape sting a bit, but he considered it a small price to pay for the sake of finally being clean. He took a little longer than he might normally have, wanting to linger and enjoy the water for just a moment or two more, before finally shutting it off. Then he dried off, put on his pajamas, and took his toiletries over to the row of sinks. He couldn't really grow a beard if he tried, but going several days without shaving had still left his cheeks and jaw rough with stubble. Shaving to get rid of it was just as nice as the shower, and when he was finished, he felt much more like himself.

When he returned from the bathroom, Jemma was sitting on the edge of the bed, damp-haired and wearing a thin tee and cotton shorts, his photo album open on her lap. She looked up as he shut and locked the door behind him. "I didn't know you had all of this," she said, gesturing to the album.

He shrugged as he set his toiletries down on the shelf and tossed his dirty clothes into a basket. "It was my mum's idea. She's always been really big into having tangible things for memories, like this." He'd come to stand in front of her; he hesitated for a moment before sitting down next to her. "She bought a photo printer just so I could print out all the pictures on my phone."

"It's a wonderful idea. Especially now," Jemma murmured, slowly turning a page. Fitz could feel his ears turning red. At the front of the album were some pictures from his childhood from before he'd moved from Scotland-a few even showed his dad-but the bulk of the album was dedicated to him and Jemma. There were pictures of them doing homework with books and papers scattered all across his kitchen table; in one photo, they stood proudly side-by-side next to their winning science fair project, and in another, they grinned outside the planetarium in Richmond. There were selfies of them on school trips and photos from Jemma's Instagram, Jemma always smiling widely while Fitz showed varying degrees of enthusiasm. There was even a picture of her holding up his issue of Newsweek while he made a face at it.

It was almost as if the album was laying everything bare, all of the photos of Jemma adding up to say just how much of his heart she owned. He wanted to squirm or get up and walk away, but there was nowhere to hide in the small room that was now their home. So he bit the inside of his cheek and watched as she made her way through the album, smiling softly at a few pictures, until she came to the last page.

There was only one photo there, taken the night they had gotten married. It was after the ceremony but before they had gone inside, and his mother had insisted on snapping a few pictures of them. His arm loosely circled around Jemma's shoulders and her hands were clasped in front of her, the light from the back deck glinting on the homemade ring on her finger. They both smiled, but there was an undeniable air of bashfulness about them. His mother had used the last of the photo printer's ink on it.

Jemma stared at it for a long moment in silence, her fingers drifting over their faces and lingering on his hand on her shoulder. "I'm really glad you have this," she said at length. "That…" She sighed. "That's a good memory."

Fitz's heart panged sharply. "Is it?" he asked, and immediately wanted to slap himself.

She looked up at him, her eyes full of an emotion he couldn't quite read. It looked equal parts fond and wistful. "Of course," she said, as if she thought it was obvious, that it didn't need explaining. He remembered what she'd said that night, that she never wanted him to apologize and that he was brave- _her hero_ -and tried desperately to cling to those words as the truth instead of the fear that he'd forced her into a marriage she didn't want. He was opening his mouth to reply, to say anything, when they heard the bell out in the corridor chime the five-minute warning for lights out.

"Time for bed then," Jemma said, gently shutting the photo album. He watched her as she stood to go put it back on the shelf.

"Right," he muttered, then swallowed and looked around. There was nothing left to do, really, except crawl into bed ( _their_ bed) and pretend like a thick cloud of awkwardness hadn't just settled over them.

He stood and moved around to one side of the bed, pulling the blankets back and thumping the pillow a bit. Jemma had her back to him, needlessly rearranging the things she'd unpacked on the shelf, and the sudden stiffness of her shoulders was a posture completely foreign on her. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her so nervous, even more than before their wedding.

 _It's not me,_ he thought to himself. _It's not me. She's not afraid of me. It's just a new thing. Sharing a bed is new. It's different. We'll get used to it. It's not me_.

After another moment, Jemma turned back toward him. He was sitting on the bed with his knees drawn up. "Um," he said hesitantly. "I hope this side is okay. I know-"

Jemma smiled faintly as she hit the switch to dim the lights and approached the bed. "It's fine, it's just a-"

"I mean, I know sides don't matter, but-"

"I'd be happy on either-"

"Whatever you want is fine."

"As long as you're happy."

They both stopped speaking at the same time, blinking at each other. Then Fitz snorted, Jemma's smile turned more genuine, and the air between them immediately felt less strained. Fitz reached out to pat the empty mattress next to him in invitation. Ducking her head, Jemma sat down before swinging her legs up onto it, and together they reached out to draw the blankets up around their shoulders as they settled down against their pillows. He'd just gotten comfortable when the room lights cut out completely, replaced by dim orange lights that ran in intervals along the base of the walls. Night lights, he supposed.

"Good night, Fitz," Jemma murmured.

"You too," he replied quietly. "Good night."

Then he let out a long sigh and tried to relax. It wasn't hard; he felt like he could sleep for days. The only thing keeping his mind abuzz was the painful awareness of Jemma's proximity. While their bed wasn't tiny by any means, it was still small enough that even with the both of them lying on their sides facing away from each other, Fitz could still feel every movement she made. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing-anything to clear his mind. It worked, and it wasn't long before he felt himself drifting off. He was only vaguely aware of Jemma shifting a bit and sighing.

"Fitz?"

He blinked away the haze of the half-sleep he'd fallen into. "Yeah?"

"I was wondering...um. Did you mean what you said to me? Back home, at the bus?"

Fitz grew very still, his breath shuddering to a stop as fear seized his heart. She wanted to ask about that _now_? In his panicked rush to find her, he'd almost forgotten about his ill-timed declaration of love, and when she hadn't mentioned it as they made their way back to the Ark, he'd assumed that she didn't feel the same way, and was just as eager as he was to put it out of sight, out of mind. Any of the little physical things she'd done-clinging to his hand, leaning against him as they rode in the back of the truck-had been out of necessity, out of friendship. But he owed Jemma the truth. Even though he was terrified to tell her, even though he was convinced it would destroy them, he needed to tell her. He couldn't lie.

It took him a moment to find his voice, and when he did, he hated how hoarse it sounded. "Yeah. I-I did."

"Oh." Jemma's own voice was oddly pitched, surprise mixed with disbelief, and Fitz felt the faintest flicker of hope he'd still had curdle in his stomach. He closed his eyes against the disappointment and despair that crashed over him.

"Look...Jemma." He took a deep breath, taking what little strength he could from the fact that he was facing away from her. It was the only thing letting him speak. "I'm not-I won't hold you to anything. Just because we're married, I won't-I won't force you to do anything you don't want to do, I would _never-_ -"

He could feel her shifting on the bed behind him. "Fitz-"

"And maybe we don't even have to be married! I mean, you're here now, you're registered, they can't just kick you out, yeah?" He knew he was panicking again, but he couldn't stop. "We could-get a divorce, or separate, if you wanted, I bet they have things in place for stuff like that, and you wouldn't have to stay here with me, like this, if you don't want to-"

"Fitz!" Suddenly Jemma was crowding against his back, her hand wrapping around his shoulder and clenching it as her forehead pressed against the base of his neck. "Don't-don't leave me. _Please_." Her voice was ragged, close to tears. "You're all I have left, you and your mum-you are _literally_ all I have left. Please don't leave me, _please._ "

All of his wounded hurt drained away instantly, and Fitz rolled over, taking care not to accidentally elbow or jostle her as he did so. She was right, he realized. He still had his mother and some of his belongings, but Jemma had nothing. She'd lost her parents, her home, all of her possessions, and the likelihood of anyone else they knew surviving were slim. All she had were the clothes on her back. And him. It was a very sobering thought.

Once he was facing her, Jemma immediately leaned into him, her hands twisting into his shirt to clutch him closer. He could feel her shaking, could hear her sniffling. "Hey," he murmured, wrapping his arm around her. "I've got you. It's okay, Jem." She curled even closer into him, tucking her head beneath his chin, and he felt a brief wave of longing wash through him. How many times had he dreamed of having Jemma in his arms, in bed? He mentally shook his head to clear it, and raised his hand to carefully smooth over her hair. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I just thought-I know you don't-I mean...I don't want you to have to pretend. For me."

He didn't want to tell her how much it would eventually kill him inside, knowing she was settling because she'd married him in order to survive. He wanted to believe that just having her friendship would be enough, or that maybe she could grow to love him as a husband in time, but he wasn't sure. As desperate as he'd been to save her, he hadn't given that outcome too much thought before he'd asked her to marry him, but now he wished he had.

"Oh, _Fitz._ " Jemma's voice was muffled against his chest, still wobbly, but he thought he could hear a trace of her old exasperated fondness. "I'm-I'm not pretending."

His hand paused on another pass over her hair. "What?"

Jemma let go of his shirt, pressing her hands flat to his chest. "I couldn't tell you then," she said quietly, "because everything was happening so fast and-and because you really surprised me. But...I do too." She let out a shaky breath. "I love you."

Fitz's heart suddenly started beating an unsteady staccato rhythm against his ribcage; he was sure she could feel it. "Jemma-you-you don't have to say that just because you think it's what I want to hear." He wanted to believe her, he did, but he was too scared, too sure of the idea that she couldn't love him.

"I'm _not_." She pushed away from him then, just enough to shift up so her head rested on the pillow next to his, nearly close enough for their noses to brush. He could barely make out her face in the dull amber glow of the floor lights, but it was enough to see that her eyes were wide and earnest. "I loved you before that, even before we got married. I think I loved you before all of this ever started." She raised a hand to slide her palm along his cheek. "Please believe me. Fitz...I _love_ you."

He could only stare back at her. "You're serious."

"I'm very serious," Jemma said, and her lips quirked into a small smile. Before he could second-guess himself, Fitz leaned forward to kiss her. It was a bit clumsy, being only his second kiss, but this eclipsed the one she'd given him at their wedding. This kiss was _real_. His mouth on hers was still shy, but he could feel truth in the way she responded immediately, eagerly pressing back against him, her fingers splayed wide over his cheek. It set sparks off behind his eyelids as he flushed from head to toe with warmth, and for one soft, beautiful moment, he let himself revel in the sensation of simply being able to kiss her.

Then nerves overtook him and he pulled away. Jemma caught his eyes with hers, though, and before he could say anything, she burst into hushed giggles. He couldn't help but follow, and they bashfully ducked their heads and pulled each other closer until their legs tangled together. They were crashing down off an adrenaline high, he supposed. They'd had a very long four days, and now that they were finally able to rest, it was like letting off steam. Possibly, they were delirious. Knowing his feelings were returned in full had made him giddy, and apparently it was infectious.

"I'm sorry I never told you." Jemma bumped her nose against his and swept a gentle thumb over his cheek. "I wanted to for ages and...I wanted to tell you before the wedding, because I'd hoped that maybe it could be-well, _real_ , but there wasn't any time and I chickened out. I didn't want to make things even more awkward."

Fitz breathed out a laugh before resting his forehead against hers, still thrilling at the idea that he could _do_ this now. "Awkward. Right. _God_ , I wanted our wedding to be real, _so_ much."

"It could be," Jemma said. "It _can_ be. I know we've been married only a few weeks, but I'm sure there's someone here qualified to help us renew our vows." She looked down suddenly, her expression turning shy. "If you want."

Oh, did he ever want. He knew the memory of their wedding would be seared into his mind for the rest of his life, but he would give anything to be able to hear Jemma say those vows again, this time knowing deep in his heart that she truly meant every word. "Or we could do it right now," he offered. "Just you and me. If we can remember the words, anyway."

Jemma's eyes were shining. "I remember them." She pulled his hands up between them before curling her fingers around his, tracing the outline of the metal band on his ring finger. "You go first, then. That's how it worked before."

"Yeah." Fitz swallowed thickly and bowed his head, trying to get his thoughts and emotions under control, before looking up to meet her eyes. "I-"

His voice cracked and he stopped, feeling his cheeks heat up, but Jemma just laughed softly and squeezed his hands. He looked her in the eye again, taking comfort and courage from her unwavering gaze, her smile, his hands in hers. There was nothing holding them back this time, no pretense to hide behind. This was _real_.

"I, Leopold Alexander Fitz, take you, Jemma Louise Simmons, to-to be my wife. To have and to hold, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." His voice was going hoarse with barely-checked emotion again, but he couldn't find it within himself to care. "To-to love and to cherish, till death do us part, forever and ever, amen."

Jemma's smile was radiant, even in the darkness of the room, and he felt like he could burn up in it if he wanted to. She squeezed his hands again. "I think the 'amen' wasn't part of it, but that's okay," she said, eyes twinkling.

He shrugged one shoulder. "It-well, sorry. It sounded right to me." As if his vows were indeed a prayer to whatever deity might be listening, that he could love her and keep her and never do anything to hurt her. "Um…your turn."

"Right." Jemma's smile softened as she looked down for a moment, swallowing much the same as he had. When she looked back up, there was so much open affection clear in her expression that it made his heart clench. Had she always looked at him like this? Had he missed it somehow? "I, Jemma Louise Simmons," she whispered, clutching his hands even tighter, "take you, Leopold Alexander Fitz, to be my husband…"

She kept her eyes steady on his as she spoke, and he couldn't have torn his gaze away if he'd tried. His entire focus was narrowed down to Jemma and her eyes and her words, the quiet conviction of them taking root in his heart and blossoming into the certainty that she loved him just as much as he did her. That they were finally on the same page, together, and nothing could tear them apart again. By the time she finished her vows he was smiling like an idiot, feeling invincible, like he could run down the corridors of their section and shout his love from every corner.

Jemma was smiling just as wide. "You can kiss the bride now," she murmured, with only the barest hint of shyness. "If you want to."

Fitz didn't need telling twice. He closed the scant distance between them to press his lips to hers, a tingle of electricity zipping through him as he realized that this was something else he was allowed to do now, too. He kissed her slow and sweet, like he wanted to take the time to memorize her and learn exactly how best to kiss her; to show that he wanted _her_ , all of her, heart and mind and body and soul. Jemma seemed to melt at his touch, sliding a hand over his cheek and down to cup his jaw as she kissed him back with the same gentle care.

It didn't stay that way for long. A slow heat built up between them as they exchanged kisses that gradually became more insistent and longing. Fitz was hyper-aware of just how close they were, their legs still tangled together and Jemma's breasts brushing against his chest, and it was lighting every nerve ending in his body on fire. It only made him want to clutch her closer, to thread his fingers through her hair and kiss her deeply and learn all the other things about her that he'd only let himself dream of before. It seemed they were on the same wavelength-of course they were-because Jemma's kisses had grown more open and she'd pressed herself even closer to him, her hand winding around to cradle the back of his head.

Then her teeth scraped over his bottom lip, and Fitz couldn't stop the surprised groan that rumbled in his chest. Jemma gasped, but before he had time to question anything she'd tightened her fingers in his hair and slanted his mouth open with hers, a desperate note to the way she swept her tongue in against his. It knocked him senseless. He groaned again, and as Jemma rolled onto her back, bringing him with her, Fitz learned what it felt like to be flooded with intense desire and heat and the need for _more_.

He ended up half on top of her with one knee between hers, and she was kissing him like her life depended on it, and he was drowning. He couldn't think straight. Sensation was combining with emotion to create a powerful rush, and if he wasn't careful, Jemma was liable to find out exactly how much he'd wished for a proper wedding night, too. Just as he had the wild thought that maybe that had been the idea, that maybe Jemma _wanted_ him to react, that she wanted him just as much as he did her, he felt her breath hitch and a deep shudder run through her body.

His first thought was that she must be rather amazingly turned on, but something about the way she was trembling felt off. He broke their kiss and pulled away slightly to look at her. "Hey-"

Then his fingers on her temple felt wetness, and he realized she was crying again. Horror slammed into him, and it was as if someone had thrown a block of ice in his stomach. He moved to roll off of her. "I'm sorry, I, did I-"

Jemma's eyes went round and large, and she moved her hands to grip his upper arms, not letting him pull away. "No-they're happy tears," she explained quickly, sniffling. "Mostly. I promise."

"You sure?" Fitz asked, still worried. He was feeling dizzy and muddled with aborted lust and couldn't shake the feeling that he'd done something wrong; the only thing he seemed to be good for lately was making her cry. But her grip on his arms was tight-almost too tight-and he couldn't bring himself to move fully away, especially when another tremor shook her. She nodded, swallowing, and he carefully smoothed her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear, as he searched her eyes for any hint of displeasure with him. He found none. After a moment, she reached up to tug his face back down close to hers.

"It's just-I love you. I love you so much," Jemma whispered. Her lips brushed against his as she spoke, her breath tickling his cheeks, and Fitz closed his eyes to better focus on her words. "When I saw you on Dad's motorcycle, I-I can't even explain…I felt…" She took a deep, shaky breath before pressing a small kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I'm happy. I'm happy that I'm with you and that we made it and that you…you love me too…but how can I be happy when everything else is gone?"

Fitz tried to swallow down the lump that had lodged itself in his throat. It was a question he'd been wrestling with himself ever since they'd left that mountain ridge in Virginia and the overwhelming relief of surviving had set in. So, in a way, he'd been expecting this. He knew Jemma was likely suffering from trauma over their ordeal, and he certainly didn't expect her to be over it in a day. She'd lost everything. He could only hope that, in him, she could find something stable to hold on to.

With that in mind, he shifted to wipe a stray tear away with his thumb. He felt Jemma's mouth quirk into the tiniest of smiles as she leaned her cheek into his hand.

"I don't know," he whispered back. "I think…maybe you can feel both. It's okay to. Because-Christ, I'm glad I found you." He'd started to run his fingers through her hair again like he'd been doing before, but here he paused and pressed his forehead to hers. "I know all of those people died. Everyone...I can't even start to think-your parents..." He cut himself off. The thought of everyone they had known back home-their friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors-all being dead was something he couldn't stomach yet. He could only imagine how Jemma felt, being ripped away from her parents so quickly, with hardly any time to say goodbye and make peace with it. There was a part of him that felt a terrible guilt over not being able to do anything for them, but they had made their wishes very clear. He blinked against the sudden prick of tears in his eyes. "It's okay to be glad you're alive, though," he added. "It's what they wanted, your parents, yeah?"

Jemma nodded again, and he lifted his head just enough to be able to look at her. Her mouth was drawn down into a tight line; she was still holding back tears. He felt his heart splinter.

"But you've got me," he added, and kissed her cheeks. "You'll always have me. You-I'm not letting you go, ever again. And you've got my mum." He kissed her nose, her chin, her temple. "You know she'll take care of you, too."

"I know." Jemma was framing his face with her hands like he was something precious, stroking her thumbs over his cheekbones. "I know. I just-I miss them."

"I know you do," Fitz murmured, trying to smooth away the fresh trembling he could feel in her arms and feeling wholly inadequate in the face of her grief. His reassurances felt almost pithy to his ears. "I'm here. Just tell me what to do."

He could see indecision warring on her face, as if she wanted several different things but either couldn't or wouldn't ask. In the end she bit her lip, suddenly looking small and unsure. "Hold me?"

 _That_ he could do, at least. "Of course," he said, and stretched to press a lingering kiss to her forehead before rolling off her and onto his back. All thoughts of desire and want and need had been shelved for later-some things were more important.

Jemma turned to curl into his side as he worked his arm beneath her and around her shoulders, pulling her close. It took them a moment to get comfortable, her pillowing her head on his shoulder and him pulling the blankets back up around them, but when they were finally settled, Jemma sighed with something approaching contentment. Fitz could feel her relax against him. "Thank you," she whispered.

He turned his face to drop a kiss to her hairline. "Not a problem."

They fell silent after that, each lost in their own thoughts and slowly surrendering to the exhaustion that had been plaguing them for days. They hadn't had that long of a trip, all things considered, but it was still difficult to accept that they were well and truly safe and that they could let their guard down. However, Jemma was solid and warm, a comforting presence beside him, and the bed was immeasurably soft in comparison to the truck beds they'd spent the last few nights in. It wasn't long before Fitz felt himself being pulled down into what would surely be a deep slumber.

He barely felt it when Jemma shifted a little against him sometime later. "Fitz?"

"Hmm?" It was the second time she'd brought him back from the brink of sleep, he thought dimly.

"Sorry…" The hand she had resting on his chest clenched slightly, and then he felt her lips light on his neck in the briefest of kisses. "I almost forgot. Happy birthday, Fitz."

It was enough to make him open his eyes, blinking up at the ceiling. "Huh?"

Jemma moved her hand to his waist, as if she wanted to pull him closer. "I was keeping track of the date using my watch," she said quietly, her own voice drowsy with sleep. "And it's the 19th. Or, it will be for a little while longer, anyway. So…happy birthday."

Fitz felt like there might have been a touch of hysteria to the short laugh he barked out. "Jemma…Christ." He felt her freeze up and after a jolt of fear went through him, he rushed to reassure her, wrapping his other arm around her before kissing her forehead again. "Sorry-I didn't mean-I meant…only you, Jemma."

"Only me what?"

Warmth spread through him, from his fingertips to his toes, and he wasn't sure he'd ever loved Jemma more than he did right at that moment. "Only you would survive a-a-everything we've been through and then remember that it's my bloody _birthday_."

Jemma squeezed her arm around his waist again. "Well, it _is_ ," she murmured reasonably, and Fitz was relieved to hear a hint of her usual practical-minded self shine through. "You're eighteen. It means you're a legal adult now." She muffled a yawn in his neck. "It's a big deal."

Fitz smiled even though she couldn't see it. "I don't know about you, but I think I'm through with being a big deal for now."

"Hmm." She nuzzled her face deeper into the crook of his neck and he had the vague thought that it was one of the nicer sensations he'd ever felt. "Don't think you can. Even here you're still Leo Fitz, world-famous astronomer. You'll have people doing things for you left and right if you're not careful."

He groaned, scrunching up his face, and he felt Jemma shake slightly with laughter in his arms. "Ugh, Jemma, don't. You know I-I don't want preferential treatment or any of that."

"I know. _So_ modest," she teased quietly. "Just one of many reasons why I love you."

Fitz let that statement settle over him for a moment, feeling it suffuse his heart with even more warmth. Jemma loved him. Jemma _loved_ him. The knowledge would take some getting used to, but he was looking forward to it.

"I love you too," he said at length, and squeezed his arm around her shoulders. Jemma's only response was to briefly clench her hand over his hip. "Sleep now?" he asked.

"Sleep," Jemma confirmed. Her voice was slurring again. "Lots of sleep. I checked, we won't have our work and school assignments until the afternoon anyway."

"Good." Fitz had closed his eyes again, and already felt himself drifting off; he couldn't stave off his tiredness any longer. "See you then."

They were both asleep in minutes, Jemma curled up in the sanctuary of Fitz's arms and his lips resting against her forehead. They had met the end of the world head-on and lived to tell the tale; in the morning, a new day and a new life would dawn for them. They didn't know what things the world post-comet held in store for them, but they both knew now that they would face it the way they had faced everything else: together.


End file.
